


The Ballad Of Me & My Friends

by dear_monday



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-07 07:52:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11054592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dear_monday/pseuds/dear_monday
Summary: It's 1982. For almost as long as Remus can remember, they've all been putting aside everything they can spare from their various jobs into a spare guitar case withBAND FUNDwritten on it in James' sprawling, energetic hand. They've spent this year writing song after song after song. They've got two weeks on the road to polish up the best and brightest of the new material, then just under a month back in London, and then - studio time. Real demos, the skeleton of a real record, something for James and Sirius to take to the indie labels. When Remus thinks about it, it gives him a feeling not unlike vertigo.





	The Ballad Of Me & My Friends

**Author's Note:**

> Hoooooly shit, I can't believe this is finished. It's been in the works for... maybe three years, on and off? I thought it was doomed to languish as a WIP forever, but here we are. If anyone wants to know what I imagined the band sounding like or wants to hear what I was listening to while I worked on this, there's also a companion playlist. Enjoy!
> 
> [The playlist is here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11215581).
> 
> Warning for brief references to abusive parents.

"We're lost," James announces, craning his neck to look back over his shoulder at them all.

"Eyes on the road, please," says Lily wearily from the passenger seat. They're barely doing ten miles an hour down a road that's little more than a dirt track with delusions of grandeur, but Remus is glad someone said it.

"Sorry, sorry." James returns his attention to the road ahead and the van rumbles gently to a stop.

Crammed into the back of the van with Remus, Sirius and all of their instruments, Peter looks dismayed. "Oh," he says, unhappily. "There's not a motorway service station around here, is there?"

James kills the engine and eases the handbrake down, then looks back around. "What, d'you think we should find one and ask for directions?"

Peter sighs. "No," he says, "I need the loo."

"Go and piss in a hedge like a normal person, then," says Sirius. He's somehow managing to lounge in an impossibly small amount of space, his head lolling on his shoulders and his eyes closed behind his sunglasses.

"Oh, hello. I thought you were asleep," Remus says, reaching over to poke him in the ribs.

"I am asleep," says Sirius, putting on his most expensive accent and affecting a disdainful sneer. "Anyway, James, I'd be more worried if you hadn't already told us we were lost eight times in the last three and a half hours."

"He has a point," says Lily.

Remus sits back (as much as he can with half a drumkit and a broken microphone stand digging into his spine) and feels his own eyes drooping shut, letting the familiar bickering wash over him. Touring has its own particular rhythms and rituals and Remus likes being out on the road, but it always takes him a while to settle back into it. Another day or two and he'll feel like he never went home.

Up in the front seat, James and Lily have finished their argument. Based on past form, the problem is James' enthusiastic but ineffective map reading.

The van's engine coughs to life again, and they slowly begin to back out of the lane.

 

*

 

They reach the pub with time to spare, despite the scenic tour of Essex.

"Out you get, all of you," says Lily, as she pulls up in the car park and throws the driver's side door open. "We haven't got all day."

Remus climbs out, stretching his arms above his head until his spine clicks. It's still light, but the shadows are long and strange, the heat of the day faded. The sky is just turning pink at the edges.

"Come on, Remus," says James, stumping past with an amp. "Let's get all this inside, then you can piss about out here to your heart's content. Lily, could you take this for me?"

Lily pats him affectionately on the cheek. "One day," she tells him, "You'll have roadies to carry your things for you. Until then, you can do it yourself." With that, she disappears inside to find the promoter.

Sirius emerges from the van with his guitar slung over his shoulder, grinning. He loves this, always has. He bumps his shoulder gently against Remus'. "Alright?"

"Yeah," says Remus. "Yeah, fine. Just, you know. It's always weird at first. We can't all be like you."

"What a world that would be."

It's then that Peter goes sprawling on the tarmac, his rack tom slipping through his hands and rolling away from him. Laughing, Sirius hauls Peter to his feet and brushes him down while Remus dives for the drum before it can escape.

"Inside," he says, "Or you'll demolish your entire kit before we've even got on stage."

They're quick, once they get to work, muscle memory kicking in. This is as much a part of it as the actual music, the well-oiled machine of the load-in. Remus carries his bass, James and Sirius their guitars, and then all three of them come back for the amps, then back again to help Peter with the rest of his drumkit. Once everything is set up on the tiny stage - the drums in place, the guitars tuned and propped carefully against the wall, the microphone stand adjusted and secured with gaffer tape - Lily sets about getting everything patched into the desk. Remus glances over at the bar, where Sirius has found a susceptible barmaid and is charming a free pint out of her. Remus smiles to himself and wanders over. Some things never change.

"And one for our bassist, please," Sirius says, as Remus reaches him. The barmaid, a redhead with a round face and a long-suffering expression that reminds Remus irresistibly of Lily, rolls her eyes, but she's smiling as she turns away to pick up another glass.

"I don't know how you do it," says Remus quietly, while her back is turned, "But you should be ashamed."

Sirius grins. Remus can feel the excitement crackling in the air around him like static electricity before a storm. Sirius is a bit like a valve amp, in that he's not really at his best unless he's working flat out. "I'm just using my god-given talents," Sirius murmurs back. "Nothing wrong with that. Anyway, you weren't complaining when I got us out of that speeding ticket earlier."

"Yeah, because Lily can't afford another three points on her license and if she can't drive then we're really in the shit," Remus reminds him, and Sirius shrugs.

"Maybe," he says, as the barmaid puts an overflowing pint down in front of Remus. "Thanks, Emily, you're a star." He beams at her, and her cheeks colour slightly.

"Oh, piss off. You boys in bands, you're all the same," she says, waving him away with a laugh, and goes to serve the man at the other end of the bar.

Remus devotes a whole five seconds to feeling guilty, then starts on his pint. Sirius clearly has no such compunctions and is halfway through his already.

"You seen James?" he says, putting his glass down.

"He's warming up," says Remus. "I heard him when I went past the loos just now."

The days, James does actual warmup exercises. His original warmup consisted of downing several pints and chainsmoking in the car park until five minutes after they were due on stage, and he'd probably still be relying on the Marlboro and Guinness method if it wasn't for Lily.

The way James tells it, he first set eyes on Lily Evans when she was running a rickety mixing desk in a quiet suburban church with a typically uninspired band trying too hard make the Church of England seem "trendy" and "modern". James claims he knew at once that she was the woman who would whip him and his band of merry layabouts into shape, and he fell in love instantly. Lily usually punches him at this point in the story. He went over to talk to her, and she told him to get up off the floor (he cheerfully admits that he'd immediately gone down on one knee, since they were in a church and she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen and he thought it was worth a try). She ran the mixing desk there every Sunday, because, she said, it very difficult to get a real job as a sound guy unless you were middle-aged and heavily bearded, and she, regrettably, was neither. What James was doing in a church is anybody's guess.

"Come on, then," says Sirius, glancing down at his watch and jerking Remus back to the present. "Sound check. I'll go and find Peter, you can drag his majesty away from the mirror. Don't be too long, Lily'll have your balls."

Remus makes a face. Sirius is probably right. "Okay," he says, finishing his pint and leaving it on the scratched bar top. "Good luck."

"I don't need luck," says Sirius reasonably, "I need to find the poor girl Peter's trying to get off with this time." He's probably right about that, too. He doesn't look too upset about it. The anticipation is starting to show now, in his restless hands and the way he's drumming his heels against the sticky floorboards.

"Tell Lily five minutes," Remus says, grinning. Sirius' enthusiasm is contagious.

Remus retrieves James from the toilets, and they meet Sirius and Peter on their way to the stage. Remus picks up his bass and slings the strap over his shoulder while James and Sirius grab their guitars and Peter takes a seat behind the kit. Remus plugs in the coiled cable sitting on top of his amp and glances up at Lily behind the desk, waiting for her thumbs up before he switches it on. He runs his hand down the long, narrow neck of his bass, and smiles. He loves his girl.

Remus plays a third or fourth hand Fender jazz bass with chunky block fretboard inlays and a pockmarked natural finish body. It was languishing in a dark corner of one of the guitar shops on Denmark Street, and the man working there told him that it was going to need a lot of work before it was even playable. Remus didn't care. It was The One, he knew it. It just felt right in his hands. Something about the mousy, unassuming instrument spoke to him, as faded and world-weary as it looked next to all the newer, shinier guitars. With the help of a couple of library books, he replaced the lifeless strings and the faulty pickups, adjusted the truss rod to straighten the bowed neck and fix the intonation, removed the cracked scratch plate and fitted a new one and polished the maple wood body until it shone. He left all the little scratches and dents in the varnish, though. He wouldn't get rid of those even if he could.

He glances across the stage. It comes back to him quick and easy, like it always does, this wordless language. Sirius is settling the strap of his own guitar over his shoulder while James does some last-minute fine-tuning. James' guitar is an off-white Telecaster that was new when he bought it but now bears the scars of his cheerful carelessness, the paint worn right through in places. Sirius plays a sleek black Strat, second hand but immaculately cared for. The money he paid for it was begged, borrowed and stolen, but not a penny of it was his parents'.

They open with an old song, one that James and Sirius somehow managed to write together while in the midst of a furious row, through scraps of paper sullenly pushed under bedroom doors. It's a good one, wound taut and seething, bristling with bared teeth and bruised egos. _It sounds_ , Sirius had said one night, with a spliff dangling carelessly from his fingers, _like a -- a big haymaker punch, but the moment before it hits you, you know?_ Remus lets it move through him, feeling his way back into the familiar space between the drums and the churning guitars. It's good to be home.

 

*

 

This is how the night ends: one by one, first Lily, then Peter, then James, the others all go quiet and slump down in their seats inside the van. Remus and Sirius are the last ones standing, shoulder to shoulder against the van's dusty bonnet. Remus doesn't know what they're talking about anymore, probably just rubbish, the easy, looping tracks of the conversation worn-in and familiar.

"I've missed this," Sirius says, only slurring a little bit.

"What, you talking crap and keeping me awake? Makes a change, at least. Not." Remus' mouth is working but his brain is far away. He's distantly aware of Sirius' head on his shoulder, Sirius' face pressed into his neck. There's something about this time of night, the sweet spot between the night before and the morning after, when no one is really drunk anymore but the hangovers haven't kicked in yet.

"Yes," says Sirius, surprisingly deadpan for someone so pissed, then ruins it by laughing against Remus' skin. Remus shivers and hopes that Sirius doesn't feel it. "No. I don't know. All this. Summer. It just feels like... like it's finally happening."

His voice is quiet, almost wondering. Remus knows that Sirius wants this, wants it desperately. He knows that Sirius wants make music - reckless, beautiful, bleeding heart stuff - and he wants to be adored, no matter what he says. Sirius Black wants to be famous, but he'd settle for infamy.

But Remus knows what he means. For almost as long as he can remember, they've all been putting aside everything they can spare from their various jobs into a spare guitar case with BAND FUND written on it in James' sprawling, energetic hand. They've spent this year writing song after song after song, practicing until their ears all rang and their hands ached. Now, they've got two weeks on the road to polish up the best and brightest of the new material, then just under a month back in London, and then - studio time. Real demos, the skeleton of a real record, something for James and Sirius to take to the indie labels. When Remus thinks about it, it gives him a feeling not unlike vertigo. It fills his ribcage, fluttering and feather-light. It's a little bit like how he felt the time he and Sirius did MDMA together. He doesn't have a word for it, doesn't know if there is one, but he thinks of it as the flying feeling.

"Yeah," he says, grinning. "Yeah, it does."

 

*

 

Sirius comes staggering out of the van the next morning with one hand held up to shield his eyes from the watery sunlight, swearing under his breath with arresting verve and creativity. Remus holds out a cup of tea and waits patiently, and after a moment Sirius manages to dredge up some actual words.

"Where the fuck are we?" he says hoarsely.

Remus hands him the tea. "Service station near Bedford. How's your head?" he asks, not unkindly.

Sirius doesn't answer immediately. Instead, he frowns, and takes a long sip from the paper cup. "It feels," he says, eventually, "Like somebody cracked my skull open, threw up in it, and nailed it shut again. Why does my mouth taste like an apple tree pissed in it?"

"Cheap cider," Remus tells him. "You never learn. It was that ninth pint of Old Rosie's that really did for you." He rubs Sirius' shoulder soothingly. "You want me to go and find you a bacon sandwich?"

"Oh, would you?" Sirius looks up at him, puffy eyes filled with hope. Remus feels a familiar surge of affection for the idiot. "I'd go myself, but I'm dying."

When Remus comes back ten minutes later bearing two pieces of slightly stale, slightly toasted bread with a few rashers of something that almost resembles bacon in the middle, Sirius takes it with a piteous moan of gratitude.

"Honestly," he says, around an enormous mouthful of white bread and brown sauce, "This is the worst hangover I've had since the three day eventer of nineteen seventy-nine."

"What about the aftermath of the great bender of nineteen seventy-eight?" James chips in, sticking his head out of the van. "That was pretty disgusting."

Sirius grins. "Oh, yeah," he says. "That's a contender for the all time top three, for sure. Short, but brutal."

"What about James' twenty-first, last year?" Peter calls from inside the van. "We all thought you were actually going to die."

At that point, Lily comes marching out into the car park with a coffee cup the size of a small bucket, and interrupts their reminiscences of The Three Great Hangovers of Sirius Black. They all pile back into the van, James and Sirius both looking slightly green. Peter is driving today, with Lily navigating. Sirius sags sideways, plastering himself against Remus' side. Remus can see the dark circles under his eyes and the shadow of stubble along his jaw. He reeks already, stale cigarette smoke and sweat and cider. In a strange, sideways sort of way, it actually suits him.

Remus remembers the day he met James and Sirius at the age of fifteen, and how they looked like mirrored versions of the same person. They were both dark-haired, both notionally wearing the same school uniform, but they couldn't have looked more different. James' tie was properly knotted and his shirt was tucked in, but something about his slouch and the way his laugh filled the room just made him look somehow untidy. Sirius, meanwhile, looked like something out of a magazine, even with his tie hanging loose, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his hair windswept and unfashionably long. Even his voice sounded expensive, Remus thought, like Eton or Harrow or somewhere like that. James was slight, wiry, good at football, always hungry, suntanned and cheerful. Sirius was haughty, moody, cool like Keith Richards. Sirius Black was Trouble. At fifteen, he was angry and difficult in ways most people didn't understand. Sirius and James were both new, James because Mr. and Mrs. Potter thought it might be best for him to do his O Levels away from certain "disruptive elements" and Sirius because he'd been expelled from yet another expensive boarding school. Remus sloped into the classroom and watched the two of them chatting away to people Remus had known since he was a child, and thought that they were already a part of things there in a way that he would never be.

Back in the present day, Sirius groans as the van jolts over a pothole, muttering under his breath about Peter's driving, and Remus hides a smile.

 

*

 

At lunchtime, they pull up outside another service station. Remus elbows Sirius awake and says, "Hey. I'm going inside, what do you want?"

"Whatever," says Sirius sleepily, his head lolling on Remus' shoulder as Peter and Lily climb out, Lily almost carrying James. "A KitKat, please."

"Right. A sandwich, an apple and a KitKat."

Sirius groans. "No. No apple. I won't eat it. I can't, I'll be sick. I'm sweating fucking cider. I'm seeing fucking apples when I close my eyes. No apple, okay? Remus?"

Remus ignores him. He heaves the door open and emerges, blinking, into the blinding light. Leaving Sirius to languish in the van, the four of them venture out in search of food. Remus relents and gets Sirius a banana instead of an apple, because he doesn't doubt for a second that Sirius would eat the apple anyway and deliberately make himself sick as a matter of principle. Remus also doesn't doubt that given half a chance Sirius would live on cigarettes, beer, and prawn cocktail crisps and probably die tragically of scurvy at the age of twenty-five.

"It's nice in here," James says dreamily, standing under the air conditioning vent and holding his arms away from his body. "Nice and cool. Let's stay. We'll play all our shows right here, in this Tesco. It'll be great. Remus, mate, are you in?"

Standing just behind James, Peter looks uncertain, like he's not sure whether or not James is joking. Lily rolls her eyes, elbows Peter put of the way and propels James swiftly towards the exit by means of a good, hard poke to the kidneys.

"Ow, fuck," says James, loudly, drawing disapproving looks from several other customers and the checkout girl. "You wound me, Evans."

"My heart bleeds," Lily says cheerfully as she marches back towards the carpark with the plastic bag of food swinging from her hand. "Keep up, Potter."

Back at the van, they pour Sirius out of his seat and haul him over to the grass verge that separates the car park from the motorway.

"There are _tables_ over there," Sirius says. "Actual tables. What's wrong with you all?"

"Shut up," says Lily. "We're having a picnic."

They arrange themselves in a loose circle and Lily hands out the sandwiches and bags of crisps and plastic bottles of Coke and Fanta. The air is heavy with the smell of cut grass and petrol fumes and Sirius slumps against Remus' side again, sweaty hair sticking to his neck, stubble rasping against his jaw. Remus takes a deep, steadying breath and reaches for a sad-looking egg and cress sandwich, trying to pull himself together. He's had time to get good at keeping his mouth shut, but sometimes it catches him off guard and he feels sixteen again - sixteen and painfully awkward with an awful, all-consuming crush as big and bright as the moon that threatened to burst out of him whenever he smiled too much or laughed too loudly or got too close.

Next to him, Sirius picks up his banana and laughs into the place where Remus' neck meets his shoulder. "Thanks, mate," he says, so quietly that only Remus can hear him, and Remus grins.

Half an hour later, all the food is gone and they're all stretched out and sleepy, drunk on the sunshine. Lily starts making noises about getting back on the road and they all pile back into the van, this time with Sirius holding the map and James in the driver's seat. Lily and Sirius are having a half-hearted, circular argument about the Sex Pistols and Remus feels like they've driven right through a hole in the world and come out in some sunlit, timeless place where there's nothing but the five of them and the endless motorway. He looks at Lily with her freckles springing up like daisies on her cheeks and over the bridge of her nose, Peter with his head lolling on his shoulders and his hair all flat on one side, James with his face half-hidden by an enormous pair of plastic sunglasses, Sirius with yesterday's t-shirt still peppered with blades of grass and dark with sweat under the arms. This is his band, and he loves them.

The sun gets hotter as the afternoon wears on and Sirius keeps turning the radio up when the roar of the broken air conditioning threatens to drown it out. When they get far enough into the countryside, the signal crackles and dies for good and Sirius reaches down into the footwell. Somewhere down there is a shoebox full of tapes, some legitimate, some radio bootlegs, some painstakingly crafted mixes.

"Found the box," he announces. "Who wants what?"

"You choose," Remus says, yawning. The light is in his eyes. He rummages in the debris around his feet and finds Lily's tortoiseshell sunglasses. He starts to wipe a greasy fingerprint off one of the lenses with the hem of his own t-shirt, then stops when he realises he's only making it worse and just puts them on instead.

Sirius pushes a tape into the slot. It's Diamond Dogs, the tape Remus recorded from his copy of the LP so they could take it with them. Sirius twists in his seat to mouth the words _your favourite_ at Remus.

When Remus dozes off, cassette tapes and bananas float nonsensically through his dreams.

 

*

 

They're opening for another band tonight, two boys and a sulky girl with calico hair, this time in an actual club. They're vaguely familiar to Remus, who has found over the last few years that the toilet touring circuit is a very small world. Their set is better than it was last night, Remus can feel it. Tighter. Sharper. They're all finding their feet again. Something strange happens to Sirius and James in particular when they get in front of a crowd - James' usual manic energy turns inwards, making him seem smooth and sure of himself, while Sirius' carefully maintained indolence catches fire and fills him up with restless energy. This is how they play: Sirius and James at the front, loud and flashy like a thunderstorm. Remus just behind, holding them steady, and Peter, the backbone. The new song that everybody knows is about Lily has the crowd jumping up and down, boys and girls sweating through their clothes and their makeup in the hot, close room. When Remus looks up at Lily behind the desk, he could swear he can see her smiling. They play Remus' favourite, too, the one about the motorbike. He knows it's not single material, but he loves it. It's not really about a motorbike at all, it's about late nights and inside jokes and the kind of friends who'd die for you. He feels like he's been living inside that song, these last few days.

Afterwards, they pack up their things and drink until the club closes, then leave for the little park at the end of the road. They pick up two thirds of the other band along the way and stumble down the pavement under the golden streetlights, tripping over each other's feet. James sings It's My Party and Winner Takes It All and House Of Fun and Call Me, mashing the words and the melodies together. Sirius joins in, veering haphazardly from one song to the next, his voice lower and rougher than James' and all broken up with laughter. He has one arm around Remus' shoulders and they lean together like a house of cards, the very picture of merry hell. When they get to the end of the road, James scrambles over the gate and holds it open for Lily with a theatrical bow. Sirius deliberately barges into James and sends him staggering away, cursing a blue streak.

Remus makes his way over to the swings and sits down on one, kicking his heels against the woodchips as everyone else settles down on the grass or perches on the climbing frame. He tips his head back and looks up at the clear sky, just breathing. He feels tired in that distant, unfocused way that means it's still washed over with adrenaline. James is showing off on the monkey bars, his feet about an inch above the ground, while Peter claps and wolf whistles. Sirius is rolling a cigarette, deep in conversation with the other band's drummer, Charlie. Lily and the other girl - Caroline, Remus thinks her name is - are sitting with their heads bent close together, laughing. Lily has always seemed older than anyone else in their little gang. _It's being a girl_ , she told Remus one night when they were sharing the sofa bed in James and Sirius' front room. _You just grow up faster. You don't get to choose._

As if she can hear him thinking about her, she glances over at him and smiles. "Hey, loser," she says. "Come down here."

Remus obediently extracts himself from the swing and drops down next to her on the grass. She wraps one arm around his waist and gives him a friendly squeeze. Lily can be a prickly creature but she's a sweet drunk, mellow and quick to smile. Remus sometimes thinks he'd probably fancy her himself, if he liked girls.

"Having a good night?" she says, and he grins, sleepily.

"Yeah," he says. He never would have thought he'd find himself here, but now that he has, he can't imagine being anywhere else. It's a hell of a thing. He leans against her. They all smell and they're all tired, and maybe it's just the cocktail of the booze and the endorphins but he could swear he's almost in love with every single one of them. "Yeah, I am."

 

*

 

The rain wakes Remus early the next morning, drumming on the roof and the windows and dripping in through the gap where the top of the passenger side door is bent. A deep, full-throated kick drum roll of thunder sounds, shaking the sky. Remus' skin feels tender and uncomfortably warm across his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. He's probably sunburnt already. He burns faster than any of the others, even fair, redheaded Lily, which hardly seems right.

He lies there, bundled up in his ratty old tracksuit bottoms and thick socks and James' Arsenal jumper, and listens to the rain. Peter is still dead to the world but Sirius is up, frowning slightly as he scribbles something down in the tatty notebook balanced on his knee. Even hungover all to fuck in the back of a van, Sirius a perpetual motion machine. If he's still for long enough, that brilliant mind turns inwards and starts hacking away at itself from the inside out. He's always thinking, always writing, always _doing_. He's forever leaving things unfinished in his wake, skipping ahead to something newer and more absorbing. The thing about Sirius Black - and it's easy to miss if you don't know him, easy to mistake for sheer, directionless, bloody-mouthed energy - is that he's always running.

James and Lily are talking quietly, heads together, voices low. Lily laughs, and doesn't even punch James. Remus tries very hard not to smile.

"You're both disgusting," croaks Sirius, looking up. "Have you no shame? Just - be hungover, you know, _quietly_."

"Good morning to you too," says Lily. "Anyway, you'll be pleased to hear that there's no show tonight."

"No _show?_ " says James. "My god, woman, what are we going to do instead?"

"Whatever your little heart desires, James. Restring your guitar. Take up clean living. Call your mother."

James opens his mouth, and then closes it again. "Actually," he says, "I probably should call my mum. Can we find a payphone later?"

"If you like," says Lily magnanimously.

"I'm not calling my mum," says Peter with a sort of morose stubbornness. "She always says she can tell when I've been smoking, just by how I sound on the phone."

 

*

 

They drive on through the morning with Led Zeppelin playing from a tape Remus found in the box. Apart from James occasionally breaking into his Robert Plant impression in the back, it's nice. Lily is on one of her Everyone Will Eat A Piece Of Fruit Today, So Help Me God crusades and James is peeling an orange, filling the van with the sweet, bright smell. Remus closes his eyes, feeling the rumble of the road underneath them.

"Remus. Hey." Sirius kicks the back of his seat and Remus jumps.

"Ow," he says, more on principle than anything else. "What?"

"Settle an argument. Dazed And Confused, When The Levee Breaks or Black Dog?"

Remus hums thoughtfully. "Dazed," he says. "It's got to be."

"Oh, sure, ask the bassist," says Peter sulkily. "Of course he's going to say Dazed And Confused."

Remus cranes his neck to look around, grinning at Peter. "Let me guess. The drummer picked When The Levee Breaks."

Peter grins back, only slightly sheepishly.

"Yeah, because you're _wrong in the head_ ," James mutters.

Remus twists in his seat to point at James. "And you said Black Dog, didn't you?"

"I will not apologise for being right," says James archly. He hums a few bars under his breath and it mixes weirdly with Houses Of The Holy pouring out of the radio speakers.

Remus rolls his eyes and looks at Sirius.

"Dazed," he says, immediately. "Come on."

"True," Remus agrees. He can hear it in his head, the slow, sexy slide of the bass line, that wailing, bluesy vocal.

"You're all wrong," says Lily calmly from the driver's seat, not taking her eyes off the road. "It's Stairway To Heaven."

There's a moment of horrified silence, then someone cracks and before long they're all wheezing with laughter.

The rain comes in fits and starts as the day slides past, pouring down in great sheets of water as they pull up in front of yet another service station and run inside, laughing, jackets held over their heads. They find a Wimpy and eat plasticky hamburgers off plasticky trays for lunch, Peter picking the damp lettuce out of his while the rain keeps on rattling against the windows.

"Lily," James says. He's looking speculatively in the direction of the arcade games. "Lovely Lily. Lily law. Lily of the valley. Lily the pink. Light of my life."

"No," says Lily, not looking up from her copy of _NME_. "Whatever it is, I'm not doing it."

James heaves a deep, tortured sigh and slumps low over the greasy tabletop. "You're a hard woman, Lily Evans."

"Well 'ard," Lily agrees, looking up, and they both laugh. _Well 'ard_ was how an over-friendly promoter once described her, with grudging admiration and one hand held up to his bloody nose. Remus suspects that she was secretly quite pleased.

After lunch, they find a payphone and James calls home. Sirius - who normally has no qualms about making weird sex noises or loudly asking if anyone wants to buy some cocaine near anyone using a phone - keeps his mouth shut. He adores Mr. and Mrs. Potter, maybe even more than he loves Mr. and Mrs. Lupin. James and Remus' parents fed Sirius and let him sleep on their sofas after he effectively orphaned himself at eighteen, and in doing so earned his undying loyalty. Sirius is surprisingly good with parents; he's handsome and charming and his table manners are impeccable and he eats whatever is put in front of him.

Sirius' own parents are old money, money like the Lupins never dreamed of. Neither of them have ever worked. With Regulus and Sirius out of sight and out of mind, being raised by endless nannies and au pairs and later shipped off to boarding schools, it was just the two of them in that big old house, and they'd had time to get mightily sick of one another. That was what happened when you married for money, said Sirius, with a shrug. Remus' mum is a nurse, his dad a mechanic. Mrs. Potter is a GP, Mr. Potter the manager of a Volvo dealership. All four of them were more like parents to Sirius than his real mother and father.

They all crowd around the receiver and assure James' mum and dad that yes, they're all getting enough to eat, yes, they're having a good time, no, they're not sick of each other yet. Sirius is smiling that smile - not the hard, sharp one that transfigures him into someone else entirely, but the real one, sweet and true. Remus wants to make him smile like that all the time.

 

*

 

"Hey," Sirius murmurs, nudging at Remus' shoulder. His voice is soft but the close, thick darkness seems to magnify it. Remus can feel the warmth coming off him, smell the sweat and the booze on his skin, hear the soft drag of his breathing. "You still awake?"

Remus makes an indistinct noise, his face pressed into a t-shirt that used to be James'. "I am now, you prick," he mumbles.

"I can't sleep," Sirius whispers, his mouth hot by Remus' ear. "Come outside with me."

Remus thinks it over for a moment. He's already awake, and it's not like he's comfortable with Peter's drumsticks poking into his ribs and the corner of an amp up against his ankle and someone's guitar pressed all down his other side. It's too hot in the van, the air slow and sticky and stale-smelling, his t-shirt clinging to his damp skin. "Alright," he says, eventually. "Hang on."

Slowly, he wriggles out of the narrow space he carved out of their gear for himself to sleep in, trying not to wake the others or trigger an avalanche of instruments and unwashed clothes. He can hear rustling and muffled swearing as Sirius does the same beside him, and he smiles. Sirius eases the door open, the faint squeal of the hinges deafening in the dark and the quiet. Up in the passenger seat, James is snoring. Sirius climbs out and Remus follows after him, carefully leaving the door ajar.

The air is blessedly cool and clean and Remus feels like he can breathe for the first time since the tour started. He drinks a deep lungful of it in, holds it, lets it out. He stretches, feeling his joints pop and his muscles unkink after so many hours folded up in the back of the van. "That's better," he says, mostly to himself, but Sirius grins over his shoulder, his teeth pale in the moonlight.

"Next summer," he says, "I'm bringing a tent."

"Like you'd know what to do with a tent."

"I'd have to make Lily put it up, obviously," Sirius agrees. He ambles over to the fence that separates the narrow road from the field that borders it and swings his leg over it, landing lightly on the other side. Remus climbs over after him, slightly less gracefully. The sky has cleared, but the ground is still soft and wet after the rain. Sirius sits down on the damp grass and stretches out, gazing up at the velvety blue-black sky. Remus flops down next to him. He can feel the cool, damp grass tickling the back of his neck and soaking through his jeans and t-shirt. His socks are already ruined. He should have thought to dig his trainers out of the rubbish in the van, but right now he's too sleepy to care.

Sirius sticks one hand into the pocket of his jeans and fumbles out a lighter and an only slightly flattened joint, presumably acquired last night from someone in the other band. Remus is touched that he's hung onto it for this long. Sirius lights it and takes a deep drag, then hands it over to Remus. They smoke it slowly, passing it back and forth until they're both loose-limbed and mellow. Sirius reaches over and runs clumsy fingers through Remus' hair, and he squirms, fizzing lines of sensation trailing in the wake of Sirius' touch like comet tails.

"Stop it," he says, grinning, the words coming out blurry at the edges. He makes no effort to wriggle away. His limbs feel heavy, distant as satellites.

Sirius laughs and does it again. Remus can feel his guitar calluses. He stretches, humming contentedly. He feels paralysed by it, submerged in a warm trance, like a dog being scratched behind the ears.

Lazily, Remus reaches over and tries to run his fingers through Sirius' own shock of dark hair. His fingers get caught, though, snarled up in the tangles, and he gives up and drops his hand again. Sirius' hair is getting long, hanging loose and shaggy around his shoulders. He looks perfectly relaxed. Sirius has always seemed easy in his own skin, even in that awkward teenage phase when his hands were too big for his body and he hadn't yet grown into his good looks. Remus, if he's honest, has always been a little bit jealous. This is Sirius in his natural state, supremely comfortable as the scruffy, disreputable libertine.

"You're a disgrace," Remus tells him, very seriously. "Look at this. What would your mum and dad say?"

Sirius cracks up, still sprawled out on his back, one hand resting low on his belly, the other still playing with Remus' hair. "Something horrible, I hope," he says.

Sirius' parents are normally off-limits, but this drowsy, contented Sirius isn't as defensive as he normally would be. Remus knows that every time Sirius manages to talk about them without going quiet and angry is a little victory, one that eats away at the hold they still have over him. Their names are just like any other bad words, losing something of their power every time they're said out loud. Remus also knows without having to be told that Sirius has most likely already been cut out of his parents' will. Not that it matters, really. Sirius wouldn't have touched their money, even if they'd wanted to give it to him. Sirius told him that late one night, when they'd been stretched out side by side on Remus' bedroom floor. All Remus could see was Sirius' outline, silhouetted in the orange glow of the streetlight that filtered through the cheap curtains. Sirius had shrugged, a sharp, jerky movement that hitched the tense line of his shoulders up around his ears. And he'd said, in a soft, guilty, 3am kind of voice, _You know how it is. You kick a dog one too many times._

Almost as if he can hear what Remus is thinking, Sirius says, "I worry, sometimes. You know, that we're not--I don't know. That we won't... that I'll have to go back home."

Home, in this context, is an ugly, complicated thing that has very little do with a brick and mortar house and even less to do with the little flat he shares with James.

"You won't," says Remus fiercely, grabbing Sirius' hand and squeezing. "Never."

There are things Sirius has told Remus about life in the heart of the Black family, and things that Sirius didn't have to. For example, the full story of how James and Sirius came to live at 27B Sandford Close. As far as Remus knows, from what he remembers and what he's managed to piece together, it happened like this:

One stormy spring night in nineteen seventy-eight, Sirius came home to his parents drunk and angry and spoiling for a fight. He got what he wanted, like he always does in the end. To hear Sirius tell it, he threw a glass at the wall and told them that he wasn't going to fucking Cambridge to learn how to be a fucking lawyer. He had his band, he said. He was going to be something. Sirius has never said as much outright, but Remus suspects that the subject of prim, proper, Tory-voting Mr. and Mrs. Black's first son being a nancy boy might have come up too.

It turned nasty.

Sirius had been somewhere south of sober when he'd finally told Remus this part. Mr. Black told him, coldly, to go and sleep it off and stop making a scene. Sirius broke something else, another glass or a stupid decanter or something, and said, _What are you going to do? Ship me off to boarding school like Regulus so you can just pretend I never happened either?_ His father snapped back, told Sirius that he'd caused so much trouble no boarding school would have him. Sirius laughed - it doesn't take much for Remus to imagine that laugh, wild and ugly and mirthless - and said, _How would you know?_ Sirius says his mother slapped him for that, just once, and Remus doesn't need to imagine that either. He's seen the marks it left on Sirius, inside and out. And this part--this part Remus has reconstructed from nothing but the knowledge of what happened next, but he thinks it's a safe bet. Sirius looked her in the eye, spat blood onto the expensive tiles. Slowly, deliberately, he turned his back on both of them and walked out into the night.

That night, Sirius slept in Remus' bed with a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a tea towel pressed to his cheek. If he cried at all, well. Maybe Remus pretended to be asleep, sick to his stomach, aching just to reach out and hold Sirius and say something, _anything_ , to stop him hurting. Remus got as far as opening his mouth once or twice, but the words felt huge in the dark and the quiet and he couldn't quite cough them up.

Sirius spent the following week or two skipping between Remus and James and Peter's sofas and bedroom floors. He dropped out of school three weeks before his first A Level exam, got a job in the same pub as Lily, and by the beginning of June, he and James had christened 27B Sandford Close with a housewarming party for the ages. He never did finish his A Levels, which is funny, because in some ways Remus thinks he's probably the sharpest of all of them, except maybe Lily.

But Sirius has never looked back.

They lie there in the grass a little while longer, talking about nothing, until Remus starts shivering. His t-shirt and his jeans are soaked through, and he can feel gooseflesh rising on his arms.

"Hey," Sirius says, elbowing him in the ribs. "You okay?"

"Fine," says Remus thickly, around a yawn. His whole body feels heavy. He could fall asleep right here. "Sleepy. Cold, kind of."

Sirius huffs a soft laugh and props himself up on his elbows. "Come on, then, Cinderella," he says, getting to his feet and brushing the worst of the dirt and the grass off his clothes. It could be days before Lily gets fed up with having to smell them all and drags them off to a laundrette. "Before you get sick again. Lily'll skin me alive if you catch pneumonia and have to spend the rest of the tour hacking up a lung in the back of the van."

Remus was a sickly child, always out of school and occasionally even in the hospital with something or other. Glandular fever, pneumonia, bronchitis, shingles, tonsillitis, he'd had them all, plus frequent colds and flus that would knock him out for weeks at a time. He got better after he turned sixteen, but by then the damage was done. He knows he's always going to be small and scrawny with the same pale, consumptive-looking face. He used to wonder if it was possible to be ill so often that you just grew into it, if your body could get so used to looking sick that it stuck that way. He lived in the shadow of something quite unknown to his classmates, and he was a rare enough sight in the classroom that his presence was a novelty. Besides, it was difficult to collect and swap football stickers in hospital, even on the children's ward.

Remus sighs, trying to muster the willpower to sit up. Sirius soon gets tired of waiting, and reaches down to pull him up. Remus sways slightly on the spot as the headrush washes over him.

"Carry me," he orders, sleepily, and Sirius grins.

"If you insist," he says. He goes to gather Remus into his arms but they're stoned and sleepy and they both go stumbling and wind up back on the ground, dew soaking through their clothes and dirt sticking to their skin.

It's like the world stops turning. Sirius' mouth is right there, his breath hot on Remus' skin. His eyes are dark and Remus wants to kiss him, aches with it, but that isn't what they do. Only he's finding it hard to remember why that is, now that he'd barely have to lean in at all, he could just slide one hand around the back of Sirius' neck and pull him in, get the other hand in his hair, let his eyes fall shut--

Sirius sits back on his heels and runs one hand through his hair, and the spell is broken. "We should, um."

"Yeah." Remus pushes himself up onto his elbows and tries to look like his heart isn't hammering in his chest, like his hands aren't shaking with unburnt adrenaline. He lets out a shaky breath. He knows how to do this. He's been doing this for years. He's never not aware of it, exactly, but it strikes him sometimes how easily he could ruin everything. How few words it would take, how little time.

They walk back over the soft, springy grass and climb the fence again, while Remus tries uneasily to put it out of his mind. When they get back to the van, Sirius flashes Remus a sleepy smile before disappearing into the darkness. It doesn't ease the tightness in Remus' chest like it normally would. He slides back into the space he left behind earlier, trying not to kick anyone or knock anything over. He can just make out his reflection in the dusty window, and he studies it carefully. He's always worried that it shows on his face, somehow, the way he feels. But the ghostly version of him on the other side of the glass looks just the same as ever, a pale, skinny boy with narrow shoulders and bony elbows and mousy hair and a wide mouth he's given up all hope of growing into. He looks on the outside the way he sometimes feels on the inside, somehow underdone, with a worried line between his eyebrows. He looks unfinished, like a first draft of himself. He tried to explain it to Sirius once - he thought Sirius might understand. But he couldn't find the words.

He sits quietly in the dark with the rim of Peter's kick drum pressed against his thigh and the headstock of James' guitar poking into his ribs, and tries to sleep.

 

*

 

The next day dawns warm and muggy, the sky outside raggedly patched with clouds. Remus swims back into consciousness, floating between sleeping and waking.

The night before filters back to him slowly, like sunlight dappling through leaves. He fidgets in his seat, trying not to think about it. The last thing he needs is to spend all day picking at the memory. It's hard to tell, but he thinks it's still early; there's just something about the light and the quiet. He's stiff and sore from sleeping in the van again and slightly hungover from the night before, and he needs some fresh air. Carefully, so as not to wake the others, he eases the door open and climbs out, blinking in the light. It's Lily who keeps track of this stuff, of course, but he has a vague idea that they've got a long drive ahead of them today and no show again tonight. He might as well enjoy being out of the van while he can. He leans back against the side of the van, just breathing.

A minute or two later, he hears the door squeak open and looks up to see Lily herself, yawning and running one hand through her unwashed hair. "Morning," she says, stifling another yawn.

"Morning yourself. You alright?"

She makes a face. "Well. My back's killing me and I think I'm going to have to crowbar these jeans off, but not bad, apart from that. You?"

Remus pauses to take stock. His head aches in a dull, unfocused sort of way, there's a sick, sour taste in his mouth and his stomach feels squirmy and unsettled. "Yeah," he says. "Alright."

They stand there in companionable silence for a little while, not talking, just enjoying being outside.

After a minute or two, Lily says, "Hey, good news. We're getting a couple of hotel rooms tonight. I've worked it all out, we can afford it."

Remus groans, tipping his head back against the dusty side panel of the van. "Oh my god," he says, dreamily. "Hot showers. _Beds_." He's already thinking ahead to a boxy little room in a Travelodge or a Premier Inn. He can feel the accumulated sweat and grime on him like a second skin and just the thought of sending it swirling away down the drain makes him feel positively giddy. He looks back at Lily. "You," he says sincerely, "Are a genius."

Lily grins. "So they say."

She's damn good at this stuff and Remus knows she's quietly, secretly very proud of it. She could be doing this for a much bigger band, if she wanted to. One day, he thinks, she probably will, even if that band isn't them. He doesn't blame her for it. He knows she loves them all but she wants more than this, more than four boys in a broken down van. But they have her for now, at least, and they're going to make the most of it. James' story of how they met might be silly and overdramatic, but the truth - and they all know it - is that Lily Evans is something a little bit special.

Lily Evans is not one of the boys. Lily Evans is also not a girl or a bird or a lass. Lily Evans is a lady, even in jeans that haven't seen the inside of a washing machine for a month with two rolls of electrical tape and a magic marker jammed into the pockets. (Lily Evans asserts that there are very few personal problems that cannot be solved with electrical tape.) Lily Evans is a lady even when bearded men twice her age sidle up to her behind the desk in pubs and clubs and bars and ask, with the best intentions, if she's sure she knows what she's doing. Lily Evans is a lady even when she breaks a promoter's nose for trying to put his hand up her t-shirt outside a pub somewhere in deepest, darkest Cornwall.

She has a sister, Petunia, but they don't get on. Lily says they don't have much in common. While that's probably true, given that Petunia studied maths at university and has a boring boyfriend and a job in Marks & Spencer, Remus suspects there's a bit more to it than that. Reading between the lines, it sounds like pretty, prickly Lily (with her disreputable friends and her fierce love and her bloody-minded independent streak) was always Mr. and Mrs. Evans' favourite. Petunia (who made all the good, sensible decisions and will most likely be married by twenty-five) never quite forgave her for that.

James emerges from the van shortly afterwards, nodding to both of them. "Lily, love of my life, you're looking radiant. Remus, you look nice too. Fag, anyone?" he says, holding his hand out expectantly.

"Filthy habit," says Lily automatically, removing the cigarette from behind her ear and passing it to James. Remus, who knows his part in this little ritual, offers James a lighter. James lights up and inhales happily, squinting against the sunshine.

"Hotel tonight," Lily says, after a moment. "And you're going to have a bath, I can smell you from here."

"Whatever you say, darling," he says cheerfully. He rubs one hand over his jaw. "I need a fucking shave, too."

Remus catches Lily's eye and they both have to look away. They're both thinking of the same thing, namely last autumn when James tried to grow a moustache. He did not succeed.

"Alright," Lily says once James has finished his cigarette, but she's still smiling. "Come on, Remus. God forbid we keep James from his shave."

"Yeah." Remus looks back over his shoulder at Lily as he climbs back inside, grinning. "Something might actually happen this time."

 

*

 

The drive is mostly uneventful, apart from the brief interlude where Peter volunteers to drive while James navigates. ("Left, left! Your other left. Yeah, that's the one. Okay, straight on over this roundabout... oh. Shit, sorry, mate, we shouldn't have done that, but it's okay, we can fix it. Go right-- ahh, why does this one say no entry? This is the one we need to go down! Bollocks. Okay. Pull over. Not here, you're on a double yellow! What about over there?") They stop for lunch again, and Lily gently insists that someone else drive for a bit. When they arrive that evening, Lily checks them in and comes back with two keys on chunky plastic keyrings, brandishing them with a dramatic flourish like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat.

"I'm going to write a song about you," James says, earnestly, gazing up at her. "What rhymes with delicious?"

"Suspicious," says Sirius.

"Judicious," says Remus.

"Pernicious," says Peter.

"Nutritious," says Lily.

"You're all fired," says James. He points to Lily. "Except you. Lily Evans, will you--"

Lily pats him gently on the cheek. "Not in a million years, mate."

James makes a face like a tragic mask and claps one hand over his heart like he's been mortally wounded. "Shot down again!" he cries, melodramatically, then shrugs. "Oh, well. It was worth a try."

Remus shoots a sidelong glance at Sirius, and they both grin. James is cavalier as ever in the face of Lily's rejection. Lately, though, Remus has started to suspect that James means it. He also has a feeling that when James finally sorts himself out and actually makes a pass at her, she's not going to say no.

Lily holds out the keys. "Who's with who?"

"I'm sharing with James," Sirius says at once, grabbing one of the keyrings.

"Oh," says Remus, slightly wrongfooted. "Okay."

Lily snorts. "Aren't you two sick of each other yet?"

They're not, of course, and everyone knows it. None of them are. For the purposes of the tea-stained council tax form that was eventually sent back to Camden borough, James and Sirius are the sole residents of 27B, Sandford Close. In practice, Remus sleeps there most nights, often sharing the creaky old double sofa bed with Peter. Lily is a frequent visitor as well, but when she stays over James is prone to fits of chivalry and usually insists that she take his bed.

"Never," declares James, throwing one arm around Sirius. "Ours is a love for the ages, ours is a love that dares not speak its name--"

"No," says Lily, "Yours is a love that never shuts up."

"Yeah, yeah, lock up your sons and daughters. Anyway, you know what they're like," Peter says, shrugging. "Joined at the hip."

"Joined at the _idiocy_ , more like. Well, alright. You two take Peter, it's his turn to have the floor, and I'll share with Remus." She nudges Remus, grinning. "Dream team," she says. "By which I mean that we'll actually be sleeping tonight."

She holds her hand up for a high five.

 

*

 

Upstairs, in a dingy, soulless little room, Remus has a mediocre shower that feels like a religious experience. He stands under the hot spray and sheds his second skin of tour grime and gets himself off quickly and efficiently, trying not to think about anything in particular, then gets out and dries off with a thin, scratchy towel. Lily takes longer in the bathroom, finally emerging in a cloud of steam with her wet hair hanging loose around her shoulders.

While Lily hand-washes her bra in the sink with the hotel soap, Remus rings an Indian restaurant for a takeaway and trudges down to the lobby to wait for it. It's halfway to stone cold when it arrives and the naan bread is going stale. Remus misses the good Indian place down the road from Sirius and James' place, with the Vindaloo so hot it makes his nose run, but they've eaten much worse on the road. They enjoy a couple of hours of awful television, then go to bed sated and happy.

It takes Remus a long time to fall asleep, and he tells himself it's because he'd already forgotten what it was like to sleep in a real bed. That, or he's just not used to going to sleep sober.

 

*

 

It's almost a whole day before Remus' vague sense of unease crystallises into something more substantial. They're setting up for the show the following night and Sirius hasn't said a single word to anyone since lunchtime when he asked Peter to pass him the orange juice.

"What's the matter with him?" Lily says in an undertone, jerking her head in Sirius' direction. His head is bowed as he tunes his guitar, his hair falling forwards and hiding his face. Remus shrugs.

"Don't know," he says. "It's Sirius. We all know he's a moody tosser. He'll sort himself out, you just need to give him a few days. Sometimes he just gets like this."

Lily gives him a long, calculating look, as  if she can see right through him. "Not with you, though," she says, and turns away to hop back down off the stage.

She gets the sound check started, instructing them all to play one by one as she adjusts levels and mutters to herself under her breath. Remus waits his turn patiently, rocking up onto his tiptoes in time with the steady beat of Peter's kick drum. Remus' favourite thing to play at soundcheck is the song about the motorbike. It has a clever, syncopated bassline that builds to a gallop in the choruses. His fingers skip over the frets when Lily calls his name, stiff and clumsy at first but loosening up quickly as the muscle memory takes over.

Sirius still won't look at him.

Remus tries to put it out of his mind, but the more he thinks about it, the more worried he gets. The thing is, Lily is right. For official purposes, James is Sirius' best friend. In practice, it's not quite like that. Sirius treats Remus more like an extension of himself, telling him things that no one else knows. Sirius hates to show the world a work in progress; Remus supposes it's a symptom of the way he's constantly reinventing himself. He's always rewriting, always discarding last week's draft.

While James is arguing with Peter about the intro to one of the new songs, Remus steps off the stage and wanders over to the desk.

"Lily?"

"Mm," Lily says, frowning down at the mixing desk and sliding the master fader up experimentally.

"What did you mean, just now?"

"What? When?" she says, distractedly. "Listen, can you hear that?"

"Um," says Remus. He doesn't know what he's supposed to be listening for. He doesn't think now is the time to mention it. "No?"

"Me neither," she says. "I think someone's patched these PA speakers wrong. _Venues_ , honestly."

Remus is optimistic that Sirius will be okay when they start playing. It's happened before. Often, all it takes to snap Sirius out of one of his black dog moods is a good show. It's like magic, the way he can be sullen and moody until the moment the lights go down, and then become a completely different creature.

Not tonight, though. Tonight, he just keeps his head down and plays. He still sounds good, of course, but he barely looks at Remus all night and he doesn't move from his side of the stage. Remus is so used to leaning against him, playing off him, standing back to back or toe to toe, that he feels curiously off-balance. It's like that lurching feeling of stepping through a missing stair. Thankfully James takes them straight from the song about Lily to the one about the bar fight, leaving out the one about the motorbike. It just wouldn't feel right today.

They finish their set to lukewarm applause and Remus walks off the stage feeling like he either wants to cry or hit someone. The mood in the van is flat, and somehow no one really wants to stay up after they've packed away all their gear.

Remus promises himself that he'll give Sirius a couple of days to sort himself out, even when Lily gives him a darkly significant look. He does his best to make himself comfortable in the back of the van, and it takes him a long time to fall asleep.

 

*

 

The next morning, James and Lily are the first to wake up. When Remus surfaces they're already in motion, the van rumbling along another stretch of empty motorway. Peter is still dead to the world, but Sirius is showing signs of life. It's a sullen, headachy kind of day, the sky outside thick with bruised-looking clouds. Remus yawns and does his best to stretch in the confined space.

"Morning, sleepyhead," says Lily, as she glances up at the rearview mirror and pulls the van into the fast lane.

"Morning," Remus mumbles. "Where are we?"

"Bristol," says James, squinting down at the battered _A To Z_. "Well. Nearly. I think." He looks up and grins over his shoulder at Remus. "Should be a good one tonight."

Remus makes a face, thinking of Sirius staring down at his own hands as he played last night, his hair falling forwards, and then immediately feels guilty. Despite (or perhaps because of) Sirius' frequent attacks of doubt, James has instead developed a kind of bulletproof optimism. Sirius probably needs the band more than anyone else, but it's James who's never doubted that they're going to make it. He's their indefatigable messiah, and his faith is so complete that Remus almost feels ashamed whenever he finds his own falling short.

"First, though-- _bollocks_. Watch what you're doing, wanker!" Lily breaks off to punch the van's wheezy horn furiously and make a rude gesture at a passing Alfa Romeo that misses their front bumper by inches, then returns her attention to Remus. "First, you can dig that roll of bin bags out and stick all the clothes you can find in there. It's laundry day."

They keep driving until they hit the outskirts of what does, in fact, turn out to be Bristol. They stop at a dingy little café for breakfast, and once they've eaten, Lily goes up to ask the motherly soul behind the counter where they might find a laundrette. Remus draws idle circles in the patina of grease on the speckled Formica table top. He can feel the oily, leaden weight of the fry up sitting heavily on his stomach.

"In hindsight," he says, "That third sausage may have been a slight tactical error."

"Rubbish," says James stoutly, wiping bacon grease from around his mouth. "It'll put hair on your chest."

"Says the bottomless pit," groans Peter, unbuttoning his jeans. "I don't know how you fit it all in. You ate all of yours and half of Lily's when she wasn't looking."

James shrugs. "Waste not, want not," he says. "Here, speaking of, Peter, are you going to finish that bit of toast? No?"

Peter shakes his head, evidently afraid of what might happen if he opens his mouth again, and pushes his chipped plate over to James.

"Are you sure? Thanks, mate, you're a rock." James pulls the plate towards him and sets about demolishing the last of Peter's toast. Lily reappears with directions written on the back of her hand, and looks down at James with the dispassionate air of a scientist examining a specimen.

"James Potter," she says. "This is a new low, even for you." He beams up at her, and she rolls her eyes. "Come on. It's only around the corner from here."

They stagger back out to where the van is parked in the road outside, Peter clutching his stomach, Sirius swearing continuously under his breath and James with a new spring in his step. James retrieves the bin liner full of boxers and t-shirts and socks and one pair of jeans that have had at least three pints spilled down them, and Lily leads them away down the road. Sirius is unusually quiet, resisting all James' attempts to draw him into a conversation about Keith Richards. Remus is beginning to worry. Sirius _loves_ Keith Richards.

Inside the laundrette, they split the contents of the bin bag between two machines and pool the change in their pockets for washing powder. There isn't a lot to do once the machines are spinning away, so James hoists himself up on top of one and makes embarrassing noises until Lily makes him get down again.

While Lily is telling James off for making a prat of himself in public (again) and Peter is laughing, Sirius slopes off and sits down on a bench at the far end of the room. Remus knows this is exactly the chance he's been waiting for, but that doesn't make what he's about to do any more palatable. _Get a grip_ , says a voice in his head that sounds a lot like Lily's. He lets out a long breath and makes himself walk over to Sirius and sit down next to him.

"Hey," he says. Sirius doesn't react. "You've been... I don't know. Off. Was it me, did I say something?"

He's combed through his memories of the last few days and he can't think what he could have done to deserve the cold shoulder, but it's hard to be sure, with Sirius. He might be smooth on the surface but he's all tangled up underneath, full of tripwires. Even Remus accidentally stumbles over them from time to time.

"Who, me?" Sirius flashes Remus his biggest, whitest smile. "I'm fine."

Which pretty much confirms all Remus' worst fears.

But after that, things seem to go back to normal. Remus doesn't know what silent bombs were falling in Sirius' head, but it seems like the raid is over. That night on stage, he's himself again, bouncing off James and plastering himself against Remus' back, hot and sweating under the lights. It feels like home. Once, they were on stage and he accidentally smashed Remus in the mouth with the headstock of his guitar. Remus finished the set with a mouthful of blood, and sometimes he still runs his fingers over the silvery scar and thinks, _I was here. I lived. I was part of something._

Afterwards, Sirius gets him so drunk he can barely think straight and sits almost on top of him, leaning up against him and laughing in his ear. It's torture. It's bliss. James and Sirius liberate a few bottles of wine and half a bottle of something that may or may not be whiskey and they retreat to the van.

They drink their way to the bottom of the bottle, and then the next, and then the next. The inside of the van is its own little world, hot and close. Remus is watching James and Lily slump towards each other bit by bit, drawn together like magnets. It's kind of sweet. He's trying to concentrate on what Peter is saying, but it's not easy with Sirius all over him like this.

"Hey," says Remus quietly, into Sirius' ear. Their little van world seems to be getting smaller and smaller by the second. What Remus needs is to go outside for a couple of minutes and get his head straight, but the message gets lost in translation en route to his mouth. "Want to get out of here?"

"Please," says Sirius. He untangles himself from Remus and reaches for the door. "After you."

Remus laughs, mostly because it just seems like the thing to do, and manages to clamber out without dislodging any of their gear.

"Hey, where are you going?" says Peter, blearily.

"I'm taking the dog for a walk," Remus calls over his shoulder and immediately trips over his own feet. "Just once around the block."

"We're in the middle of nowhere," Lily points out, with the immaculate diction of the well and truly plastered. "There is no block."

"Block, field," Remus says, waving the distinction away. He's finding his own train of thought rather slippery, especially with Sirius laughing in his ear like that. "Won't be long!" He slams the door behind him and they stumble out into the night, both giggling.

"Taking the dog for a walk," Sirius says, shaking his head. "Classic."

"I try," says Remus modestly. "Come on."

"Would the lady care for a turn around the formal gardens with me?" says Sirius, offering Remus his arm.

Remus pushes him into a fence.

"My good woman," Sirius slurs, really embracing his character as he gets somewhat unsteadily to his feet. "You do me a grave--a grave..."

"Insult," says Remus, helping to pull him up. "No, a... disservice."

"That's the one," Sirius agrees, wobbling dangerously as he climbs over a stile and into the field on the other side. Remus grabs at his t-shirt to steady him, but suspects he's doing more harm than good. He follows Sirius over, stumbling a bit on the landing, and they wander off across the field. They're miles from anywhere but the moon is bright and the sky is sugared with stars and Sirius is beautiful. He grins, a sloppy, drunken grin, and Remus feels his chest go tight. He forces himself to breathe. It comes and goes, but this, he tells himself severely, is a really terrible time to come over all starry-eyed. Not now, when they're all alone in the moonlight with their inhibitions and their better judgement around their ankles.

They make their way across the soft, springy grass, both weaving from side to side, bumping into each other and laughing.

"That song," Sirius says, suddenly. "The one you like, the new one."

Remus blinks, thrown. "Oh yeah? What about it?"

"The one you like," Sirius says again, grabbing at Remus' hand for emphasis. "You know. _You_ know. The one about the motorbike."

"The one about the motorbike," Remus agrees, although he's not sure exactly what he's agreeing to.

"It's about you," Sirius says.

Remus stops dead. "It's what?" he says, stupidly.

"About you. Or, well. You know. Us."

And Sirius smiles, and Remus could swear it almost breaks him.

Remus Lupin fell quietly, hopelessly in love at the age of fifteen when Sirius Black rode his bike - just a bike back then, not the snarling black beast of a Yamaha he bought when he turned seventeen - all the way from his parents' place in Islington to Mr. and Mrs. Lupin's terraced house at two o' clock one Tuesday morning. It was summer then, too, and Sirius stood on the pavement and threw pebbles at the window until Remus opened it to lean out. They'd been near strangers, and Sirius had seemed wild and glamorous and exciting. Remus remembers opening his mouth to ask Sirius what the hell he thought he was doing, but somehow, what came out instead was, _Sirius? You alright?_ And Sirius had shrugged and scuffed his feet and said, _Couldn't sleep. I just wanted to talk to someone. Can I come in?_

Sirius' smile isn't the full-force megawatt smile that means he wants something or the thin, sly smile that means he's trying to start a fight. It's the small, soft smile Remus remembers from that night seven years ago and all the ones like it in between. Remus wants to--he doesn't know. Kiss him. Say something. This _has_ to be it, this has to be Sirius' way of making a move. Something, anything, must be about to happen. Remus is aching with it, barely breathing.

"Really," he manages to say. He licks his lips.

"Yeah." Sirius is standing so close, Remus can feel the warmth rolling off his skin and smell the wine on his breath. Does his gaze flick down to Remus' mouth, just for a split second, or is Remus imagining things? "I didn't want to tell you, before," Sirius says quietly, one corner of his own mouth turning up in a wry, sheepish smile, "You know, in case you didn't like it. I would have looked like a right idiot."

"You're not an idiot," says Remus' mouth, quietly, while his brain whirls away, trying to figure it all out. "It's my favourite."

"Well... good. I'm glad." He smiles again, that smile, and Remus thinks, oh god, oh god, _this is it_ , and he leans in.

And Sirius turns and keeps walking and Remus could fucking kick himself. Of course not. He knows how this scene is supposed to end, but this is real life, not a pop song. He double-times until he catches up with Sirius and tries to remember how to act like a normal person again.

Sirius takes the cigarette from behind his ear and lights it up, then takes a luxuriant drag and offers it to Remus. Remus doesn't want it, but he takes it just for something to do with hands and then passes it back.

They walk a lazy, curving path that leads them back to the outskirts of the city, a quiet, sleepy little suburb. They're not far from where they left the van, but Remus doesn't want to go back yet. They're both falling-down drunk, laughing and stumbling, and Remus knows he'll pay for this tomorrow but he doesn't care.

"Hold on," says Sirius, sticking one hand into his pocket and making a face of extreme concentration. Remus sways to a stop. There's a small constellation of mirrored glass shards on the pavement under their feet, like some car's wing mirror came to grief here. A moment later, Sirius makes a triumphant noise and produces the lighter again and the same slightly flattened pack of cigarettes. There's a car parked in the road, the colour bleached from its paint by the streetlights, and Sirius leans back against it as casually as he can, given that he seems to be having trouble waking in a straight line.

And an alarm wails in the quiet night, splitting it open.

Sirius leaps away from the car like it's hot, dropping his lighter with a comically shocked expression as a light blinks sleepily to life in a window. Remus just stands there, doubled over with laughter.

"Shit," Sirius hisses, laughing too, hastily grinding out the cigarette underfoot.

"What do we do?" Remus says, looking around. More lights are flicking on up and down the street. It's only a matter of time before somebody's curiosity gets the better of them and they come outside to see what's going on. Sirius looks like a madman, the streetlights making great dark hollows of his eyes and a crescent moon of his manic grin. Remus - god, Remus has never been so in love.

Sirius leans in close, grabs Remus' hand, and whispers, "Run."

They take off, both laughing almost hysterically, fizzing with adrenaline. When Remus closes his eyes he can see their hands as glowing afterimages, like glow sticks, like fireworks. Just for a little while, his knees don't hurt and there's no savage tearing of the breath in his lungs. There's nothing but the drumming of their feet on the pavement and Sirius' hand in his, and they're flying, they're infinite.

They make it all the way back to the van, both stumbling, both gasping for breath. Sirius is still laughing and Remus is surprised to find that he's doing the same.

"Oh, I'm getting... getting too old for this," Remus wheezes, bent double, his hands on his knees.

"You're--oh, fuck me-- _twenty-two_ , mate," pants Sirius, grinning.

"Look at us, Jesus Christ." Remus is laughing, laughing so hard it feels like there's no air left in the world.

"Fine young athletes we are not," Sirius agrees, leaning back against the side of the van and gasping for breath. Between Remus' knackered lungs and Sirius' love affair with his Marlboro reds, neither of them are winning any races.

"Come on, then," Remus manages when he can breathe again. "Let's get inside." He shushes Sirius when he cracks up again, which in turn makes Remus laugh, and then he's fumbling the door open. In the slice of moonlight that falls across the cluttered interior of the van, Remus can see that James, Lily and Peter are fast asleep - James with his head nodding, Peter with his mouth wide open, Lily with an empty bottle lying on its side by her dangling fingers.

At that point, Sirius stumbles into Remus' back and Remus goes down hard, breathless all over again. They land mostly on the floor, side by side, with a loud thud. Remus freezes, barely breathing, but none of the others wake up.

"Shhh," hisses Sirius in a noisy stage whisper that wobbles on the edge of laughter.

Remus does his best to crack up in total silence, without success. He kicks at Sirius' ankles. "You shut up," he whispers back. "You keep making me laugh, you dick."

Sirius attempts to slap his hand over Remus' mouth, but it's dark and they're both so drunk that he sort of misses and ends up stroking Remus' face instead. Remus leans into it, still giggling. Sirius' fingertips are rough and his hands are hot and sweaty but it just feels--good. Remus rolls over towards him, not thinking, just wanting to get closer, but Sirius must have had the same idea, because there's a confused scuffle that ends with the two of them hopelessly tangled up and half on top of each other. That sets them both off laughing again, of course, and Remus buries his face in the place where Sirius' neck meets his shoulder. The collar of his t-shirt tickles Remus' nose, steeped in sweat and cigarette smoke, and Remus tries to remember which shirt it is. Maybe the Queen one that they all wear but no one actually remembers buying. Or - no, the Blondie one that might have been Lily's, once upon a time.

"Remus," croons Sirius, his mouth right by Remus' ear, his breath warm on Remus' skin. Remus shivers, and shoves at him half-heartedly.

"Get off," he says, making absolutely no effort to untangle his legs from Sirius'.

"Oh, like this?" Sirius throws his ankle over Remus' and squirms, jabbing Remus with a bony kneecap in the process and making him laugh again.

"Wanker," Remus gasps, working one of his own hands free to stifle the giggles bubbling up in him.

Sirius doesn't deny it, just wriggles closer until they're pressed together all the way down, pinning Remus down with his weight. Remus tries half-heartedly to throw him off, but it really does feel kind of nice. Sirius lifts his head and looks down at Remus, and Remus' breath hitches. His heart is jackhammering in his chest, his hands are sweating, Sirius must be able to see, it must be written all over his face--

And Sirius kisses him.

Remus Lupin bought David Bowie's _Heroes_ on the fourteenth of October, nineteen seventy-seven, the same day it came out. He was seventeen. He remembers carrying it home and placing the vinyl reverently on the turntable then lying back on his bed, playing it again and again, staring blindly at the ceiling. He remembers his fingers ghosting over phantom strings and frets as he followed the bass lines. It felt huge, heart-pounding, head-spinning, bone-shaking. It felt like being in love.

When Sirius kisses him, it feels like that.

 

*

 

When Remus wakes up, the sun is just rolling up over the horizon and painting the world pink-gold. He burrows deeper into the enormous jumper he's been using as a blanket as his brain slowly fires up, flicking through the night before like a photo album. The song about the motorbike. The car alarm. His lungs burning from running, from laughing. Sirius' weight over him, his whole body warm and close, Remus' face pressed into that Blondie t-shirt, Sirius' mouth on his.

Remus turns his face to the side and grins.

He dozes on and off while James drives and Lily reads the map. He dreams a little bit, those strange, surreal dreams that only happen late in the morning when the brain knows it should be awake. He sneaks glances at Sirius from time to time, but he's still dead to the world. Every time Remus looks over in his hazy waking moments, his stomach swoops at the thought that Sirius could be doing the same. He's headachy and hungover but it's a delicious kind of anticipation, slow and lazy.

When they stop for petrol sometime around mid-morning, James announces that he needs a piss and Peter goes with him to the service station loos while Lily goes to pay.

"Hey," says Remus, looking over at Sirius. He can feel the smile on his face, soft and warm and oh so telling. "Morning, sleepyhead."

When Sirius opens his eyes, he looks wide awake. Almost as if he hadn't been asleep at all. "Morning," he says.

Remus can't stop fucking smiling, but, he thinks--and it's an intoxicating thought, heady and reckless and huge--maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it doesn't matter if Sirius knows.

"So, listen," Remus says. "Last night--"

"Last night?" says Sirius, in a flat, unreadable voice.

Remus could swear he feels his heart stop. "Last night. We..."

"We got drunk and stumbled back here," says Sirius, quietly, "And we fell asleep. Didn't we?"

It's not a question. He's looking down at his knees. Remus opens his mouth, and closes it again, hot and itchy and stinging all over with embarrassment. So that's how it's going to be.

"Right," he says. "I see."

Sirius glances up at him, then looks away again. He turns away to stare out of the dusty window, and says, in a voice so low Remus can barely make out the word, "Thanks."

"What I don't understand," starts Remus, his own voice coming out hard and sharp, "Is how you can--"

And then the door swings open and Peter and James are laughing and Lily is swearing at James and Sirius looks like he's scared to death, and Remus closes his mouth. He feels it like a punch in the gut, that moment of animal terror on Sirius' face. Remus thinks he might be sick.

"About time you bastards woke up," James says, kicking Remus good-naturedly in the shins as he climbs into the middle seat. His loud, cheerful voice is such an abrupt change of pace that Remus experiences a brief, weird moment of that stomach-flipping roller coaster feeling. When neither Remus nor Sirius responds, James elbows them both in the ribs. "Come on, then. What did you to get up to last night?"

Sirius is looking down at his knees again. Remus turns his face away, staring out the window. "Nothing," he says. "Nothing at all."

 

*

 

Remus barely says a word to anyone all day, sick to his stomach with unhappiness. Sirius doesn't look at him once during the show. Afterwards, when they've stepped off the stage and packed their things back into the van, he catches sight of Sirius' dark head, his hand on a tall blonde girl's waist, whispering in her ear. She laughs and Remus turns away, sick to his stomach, his hands unsteady. He slaps a precious tenner - emergency money - down on the bar and says to the barmaid, "What have you got that's cheap?"

  

*

 

Someone nudges Remus' shoulder and he groans, wishing they'd go away. He lies very still, trying not to provoke his headache into doing anything like stabbing him in the brain.

"I would love to get out of your way," he says, sadly. "I would. But I honestly think I might be sick if I move." He squeezes his eyes shut and prays for death.

"Here lies Remus Lupin," intones James, solemnly. "A legend in his own lunchtime."

Lily makes a sympathetic noise. "You can stay here if you want," she says, quietly. "We're stopping to get some lunch. I'm guessing you don't want anything?"

Remus' stomach turns. "Nngh," he says.

"We'll get you some water." Coming from Lily, this is a rich gift indeed. She doesn't believe in bottled water, except in the direst of emergencies. "And a sandwich for later, but you're not allowed to eat it if you think you're going to puke." She pats him on the shoulder and clambers over him to get to the door.

Remus drifts in and out of wakefulness, dreaming that his brain has turned to syrup and will run out of his ears if he moves too quickly. At some point, he must have woken up properly and swapped places with James, since he's now in the passenger seat and James is in the back, but Remus is fucked if he can remember when or why. When he next comes to, James and Sirius are sitting with their heads together, hunched over a tatty piece of paper. Remus watches them in the rear view mirror through one half-open eye.

"I'm just _saying_ ," James says, in a furious whisper, underlining something on the page with unwarranted force, "We should move this one up. It's too slow, it's throwing off the whole second half."

"And _I'm_ just saying," says Sirius, grabbing the pen off him and scribbling vigorously over something else, "You need to let them breathe. You play one fast song after the other and you just wear them out."

"Sure," James agrees. "But there's a difference between wearing them out and fucking--fucking _knocking_ them out, there was a mass exodus to the bar when we did it like this the other night."

"And I'm not saying there wasn't, but I don't think-- hold on. What if we..." frowning, Sirius crosses something out and draws an arrow.

"Well." James squints down at it. "It's different. I mean, it's worse. A lot worse. But different."

"No, _look_ ," says Sirius, and they're off again.

The rhythm of James and Sirius bickering just to pass the time is familiar. Remus closes his eyes again and hates Sirius for sounding so normal, hates James for not having a clue, hates himself for fucking it all up.

They keep driving, time stretching out like chewing gum. Sometimes Remus closes his eyes and sleeps for a week, only to wake up and see that his old watch has counted out a whole five minutes. Sometimes he blinks and close to an hour has passed. He drinks from a lukewarm bottle of water and eats half of a limp cheese and ham sandwich. Later again, he finds himself hunched over the toilet in a service station, throwing up his guts, with only a vague memory of how he got there. He stumbles back out of the cubicle and splashes water on his face, wishing he could just feel properly clean. His reflection looks back at him, pale and hollow-eyed. He remembers the instant of mindless fear on Sirius' face and feels his stomach twist with something like spite. He thinks, _I hope it's burning you up_.

 

*

 

That night, they play an absolutely terrible show in a dingy little room underneath a train station with a mirror ball on the ceiling and a faint, indelible smell of damp. The promoter tells Lily that someone spilt beer all over the mixing desk the night before, but assures her that it's "Not a problem, love, not a problem, I've got a mate bringing a replacement down, yeah?"

Lily closes her eyes for a long moment, a sure sign that she's trying not to scream.

A substitute mixing desk is eventually brought in, but it only has eight channels and two of those are comprehensively buggered. Lily can't even equalise the funny ringing on the snare drum and they end up with a mix that's weirdly heavy on the guitars and decidedly light on the kick drum, and James can barely make himself heard over the racket of the passing trains.

It's not the worst show they've ever played, but it's close.

"Sorry, everyone," says Lily afterwards, once they've packed their things away and decamped to the bar. She looks about as close to tears as she ever gets. "That was my fault."

"It wasn't," says James fiercely, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

"Yeah," Sirius chips in, and Remus looks away. "They completely fucked us over with that desk, see if we ever--"

"Alright, lads?" As if from nowhere, the very promoter that Sirius was no doubt about to badmouth appears and claps James on the back. James manages a fairly civil noise but Lily's mouth goes tight and she doesn't look at him.

"Here." The promoter - Kevin or Trevor or fucking Derek or whatever his name is - leans in conspiratorially, grinning. Remus fights the urge to wrinkle his nose at the stale reek of beer on his breath. "Is your bird on the rag or what?"

James and Sirius both look like they're about to start throwing punches and Peter is slowly backing away. Remus sighs. "Firstly," he says, "She's not my bird. I don't think she's anyone's bird. Secondly--"

"I am, actually," says Lily coolly, reaching for her fly. "Want to see?"

Kevin, Trevor or Derek makes himself scarce pretty quickly after that. James drops his head onto Lily's shoulder and grins up at her. "Feeling better?" he says.

Lily raises her eyebrows and takes a long sip of her pint. "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about," she says, archly, then completely ruins it by grinning back at James.

By unspoken agreement, they stay and drink their way through every last penny of the bar tab that was their only compensation for this gig.

"Hey," says James, some time later. They've burned through the tab and are in imminent danger of having to pay for their own drinks. "Hey." He tries to nudge Remus and almost overbalances. He rights himself and tries again. "Where's Sirius?"

It's not like Remus hadn't noticed he was gone. He hates it, hates that it's almost a relief.

"You should go and look for him," Lily says, levelling him with a look that's both all too knowing and surprisingly steady for someone who's on her fourth pint in ten minutes.

"Why me?" protests Remus. "Make James go." 

Lily snorts. "We'd never see either of them again, you know what they're like."

"You have no respect," says James, sadly, "For our great love, or--"  
  
"Oh my god, Remus, get out while you can," Lily says loudly, and gives him a gentle push towards the door. He's a little bit unsteady on his feet - three pints in quick succession on an almost empty stomach, he should know better - but he threads his way through the crowd of people milling around the bar and steps outside. The evening is warm, the sky violet and gold. There are a few tables outside and he leans on one for a moment and just breathes, steadying himself.  
  
He doesn't have to look far to find Sirius. He's sitting on the kerb with his feet in the road. There's a lit cigarette in his hand but he's not smoking it, just holding it as it slowly burns down to the filter. 

Remus sits down, slow and careful, like Sirius is a wild animal he's trying not to spook. Just for a minute, he pretends that everything is still how it's supposed to be. It isn't, though. Something has cracked right down the middle and he can almost feel it in pieces all around them, like broken glass. Sirius doesn't say anything, but he doesn't get up and walk away either. For a little while, they just sit there, neither of them saying a word.

"I wish--" Sirius starts, and then stops. It's like the words he's trying to force out are from some other language. Remus is blindsided by sudden, vivid memory of Sirius at seventeen, lying in a patch of late afternoon sunlight on Remus' bedroom floor, determinedly butchering every last word of his French homework just to make Remus laugh. "I wish it wasn't like this."

"Yeah," says Remus, staring down at his own trainers. "Me too."

Sirius is quiet. Either he doesn't know what to say, or he knows exactly what he wants to say and just can't quite bring himself to do it.

After a minute or two, Remus loses patience, sighs, and says, "I just wish you'd fucking talk to me. Whatever... whatever rubbish is going on in your head, we can sort it out, alright?"

Sirius goes stiff all over, his expression freezing on his face. "It's nothing you can sort out," he snaps. "Maybe I don't tell you everything, did you ever think of that?"

"You used to." Remus realises that he's on his feet; funny, he doesn't remember standing up.

This isn't what they do, they don't fight like this. Sirius and James, sure, but never them. For a single, wild moment, Remus wants to throw a punch, just to get an honest reaction.

"Look," says Sirius. "Look, let's just--not. Not today, alright?"

"You can't just..." Remus makes a wordless, frustrated noise. "...Kick this under the carpet, Sirius, we need to talk about it. Can't you see how it's fucking us up? Everyone's noticed, we can't keep going like this."

Sirius looks miserable. "Yeah," he says, looking down at his hands like he can't bring himself to meet Remus' eyes. "Okay. But after the last show, alright? Not tonight, I just... can't."

The real kick in the teeth, thinks Remus, is Sirius acting like talking to him is going to be some horrendous ordeal. That's the thing that really hurts. And the worst thing of all is that Remus will take what he can get.

 

*

 

Sirius doesn't come back inside. Instead, they find him in the van when it's time to leave, holding a wadded-up t-shirt to his bloody nose. His eyebrow is split and he's got the makings of a hell of a shiner, too, the hollow of his eye socket already looking bruised and tender. He looks immensely pleased with himself.

"You absolute bloody _moron_ , Sirius Black," says Lily, punching him hard in the shoulder. "What did you _do?_ What if you'd broken your hand, shithead? What would we have done then?"

"Now," says Sirius, warily. "I know how you're going to be, Lily, but I swear he started it."

"Oh, for heaven's sake." Lily grinds the heels of her hands into her eyes. "It was the promoter, wasn't it?"

Sirius looks sheepish. "Um."

This kind of thing is hardly unprecedented, but it's rarer than it once was. The year after Sirius moved out of his parents' house was littered with incidents like this, blood and broken glass and midnight visits to A&E. After a while, Remus started to dread the phone calls, because you never knew whether this would be the time Sirius had picked a fight he couldn't win or crashed his motorbike just for something to do.

"He kept saying he'd never book us again," says Sirius. "Even before I hit him, I swear. I haven't burnt any bridges there."

Lily thaws minutely. "I suppose that's something," she says. Sirius smiles hopefully, but there's blood in his mouth and it doesn't quite have the desired effect.

"Alright," says Lily, relenting. "Come here, then. Let me have a look at that."

Sirius obligingly puts the t-shirt down and allows Lily to tip his head back, examining his nose for a minute. Remus looks away. "I don't think it's broken," Sirius says, thickly.

"It's not," Lily says. "You're still an idiot, but you're a lucky one. Go to sleep, you're driving tomorrow morning. And if you want painkillers you're out of luck, we don't have any."

Sirius accepts this with good grace and only minimal complaining, and he doesn't meet Remus' eyes once.

 

*

 

The slight detente is better than the strange no man's land they were stumbling through before, but not by much. Sirius is subtle about it - so subtle, in fact, that Remus doesn't even notice it straight away - but somehow they're never alone together after that. Remus sits in the back of the van and stares out of the window, watching fields and suburbs scroll past. Every mile is another mile closer to home. He doesn't know if that's a good thing or not.

Remus knows all kinds of things. He knows Peter practices drumming out their songs on his knees while they're driving because he still doesn't think he's good enough. He knows James hurts a little bit when he looks at Lily, just like Remus does when he looks at Sirius. He knows Sirius barely sleeps at all, just stays awake and climbs the walls in his own head. Remus just wishes he knew how to fix things.

There's another show that he barely remembers, conscious only of Sirius playing with his back turned to Remus, to the audience. Afterwards, Sirius disappears again, and Remus starts drinking.

 

*

 

He wakes up feeling so awful that it takes a long time for his brain to start up and remember the night before. He groans, and pushes his face into the balled-up jumper he's using as a pillow. Shit. He gives his stomach a minute to stop turning over, but it doesn't. He gets about ten seconds of advance warning in which to get the van door open and scramble out, and then he's bent double and throwing up the contents of his stomach onto the grass by the side of the road in deep, painful heaves that hurt his chest and his stomach. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, feeling weak and shaky, and stands there trying not to look down while he gets his breath back.

Behind him, someone else climbs out of the van and a hand claps him on the back.

"Hangovers hitting you a bit harder than they used to, eh?" says James in his ear, far too cheerfully. "You're getting old, mate. You'll never see seventeen again, that's for sure. Over the hill, you are. We're trading you in for a younger model."

Remus manages a slightly brittle laugh. "At least I didn't get wankered and throw up _in the van_."

"That happened _once_ ," says James, affronted, shoving Remus away. "And it wasn't my fault, I'd had a dodgy kebab. _And_ it was mostly in a plastic bag."

"Yeah. _Mostly_."

James shrugs. "I can't argue with that. Home today, though."

He's grinning, and Remus realises that he's right. Tonight is the last night of the tour, the hometown show. They're playing a run-down club somewhere in Camden, just around the corner from the flat. Everyone they know will be there, and Remus is pretty sure Lily has secretly been trying to get an indie label representative interested too. There's something about these hometown shows - these days, Remus wouldn't think twice about calling it magic. They're just _more_ , somehow, in some wonderful, indefinable way.

Not today, though. Right now, Remus just feels hungover and miserable. They get back into the van and Remus dozes on and off. When he catches his reflection in the rearview mirror, his face looks grey and sick.

"What's the matter with him?" says Lily.

"Hanging," James stage whispers back. "Let him sleep, we need him fighting fit for later."

They drive on through the day, stopping at lunchtime for sandwiches that taste faintly of petrol. James and Lily bicker, on and off, with Peter chipping in every once in a while, but Sirius is quiet. Remus sneaks a look at him now and again, and once or twice he's almost sure he catches Sirius looking back. Remus fends off all James and Lily's attempts to draw him into the conversation with monosyllabic answers, and after a while they stop trying.

The streets begin to look familiar again as they get close. James turns the radio on - Queen and Thin Lizzie - but no one sings along. Remus isn't so out of it that he doesn't notice that the mood in the van is subdued for the day of a hometown show, but he doesn't have the energy to try to do anything about it. After what feels like hours, they finally pull up outside the bar and step out into the warm afternoon. This is home turf, a favourite haunt. They played their first ever show here, to a crowd who were more interested in the couple having an argument than the band. Just standing in the street outside brings back a cascade of half-remembered nights, streaked over each other, the details running like paint. Remus shivers and thinks of that saying, the one about feeling someone walk over your grave.  
  
Tom, the manager, is an old friend. He welcomes them in with open arms, grinning and asking questions about the tour. Remus fakes his way through it as best he can, suddenly finding that he's forgotten how to control his own face and that a smile is a difficult thing to manufacture.  
  
"I'll let you get on with it," says Tom, finally, clapping James on the shoulder. "I'll be in the back, just say the word if you need any help. Good to have you back, kids!" 

They bring the gear in, all of it looking slightly worse for wear than it did at the beginning of the tour. Even James' spare guitar lead has gaffer tape wrapped around it, the microphone stand is one good kick away from giving up the ghost for good, and Sirius' amp has started making weird noises again. Remus works his way through it quietly, mechanically. He can feel James and Lily's concerned looks like a hand between his shoulderblades. He tries to ignore it.

"Everyone on stage, please," says Lily, briskly, once everything is in place. "The sooner we get started, the more time I have to fix the sound in this shoebox of a room."

She's all talk. Granted, it's a funny room, long and thin with exposed brick walls and odd echoes that you can't always hear, depending on where you stand. But Lily has mixed for this room more times than any of them can count, and she knows how to make it sing. She could do it in her sleep.

Numbly, Remus steps up onto the uneven stage and kicks at a scuffed bit of electrical tape under his feet. He picks up his bass, but it feels unfriendly - unfamiliar, even - in his hands. He feels like an extra walking through a film set, the guitar in his hands a cheap prop.

He can't do this.

He takes the bass off again and props it against the wall. His hands are shaking. He needs to get out and get some air before the walls fall in on him.

"Remus?" calls James, as he heads for the door. "Remus, mate, are you alright? Where are you going?"

Remus ignores him. He yanks the back door open and steps outside, breathing hard. He sits down on the kerb and closes his eyes. After a minute, the nausea starts to ebb away. He takes a deep breath, holds it, lets it out again.

He's sunburnt and hungover and heartsick and all he can think is that he wants to go home. This isn't fun anymore. For all its rough patches and its resolute unloveliness, the band has been good to them. He's no stranger to feeling overtired and underfed, but he can't remember ever wanting out like this. This is three o' clock in the morning, this is the last gasp of the party, the bottom of the bottle, the cigarette smoked all the way down to the filter.

A shadow falls over him and he looks up. The sun is low in the sky, gilding the underbellies of the clouds, and he lifts his hand up to shield his eyes.

"Hey," says Lily gently. She hands him a cold beer. "You okay?"

Remus pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to pull himself together. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I suppose so."

"Okay," she says, but she doesn't sit down, just stands there and waits.

Then he realises that Lily is wearing that Blondie t-shirt and he feels suddenly sick to his stomach again, his gut churning queasily and his head pounding. He needs a good night's sleep in a real bed, a glass of cold water, a square meal that contains some kind of vegetable and absolutely nothing defrosted or deep fried. He doesn't want the beer, just thinking about drinking it is making him sick. He runs his finger down the side of the can, drawing a line through the condensation, and pushes his sunglasses up his nose, just for something to do with his hands. "No," he says. He's too tired to lie. So what if Lily knows? So what if the whole fucking world knows? He swallows and immediately wishes he hadn't. His mouth tastes stale and sour. "I'm... not. Sirius kissed me."

He doesn't need to explain the rest. Lily knows what happened next, she was there to see it.

Lily is quiet for a long time. It's one of the things Remus likes best about her, how she doesn't feel the need to fill every silent moment with chatter. "Shit," she says, eventually. She doesn't swear often, and it sounds weirdly dirty in her mouth. She sits down next to Remus and takes the beer back, then lights a cigarette and hands that to him instead. He's normally just an occasional social smoker, because that's about all his lungs can take, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Lily might have one when she's drunk or stressed, but she seems to carry them mainly for James' benefit. Remus feels strangely touched.

He takes a drag and exhales, watching as the smoke curls away into the marbled sky. "Yeah," he says.

"Oh, sweetheart," Lily says gently, shuffling closer and smoothing back his hair. "You're really miserable, aren't you?"

God, he must look awful. Lily is not normally inclined towards pet names, she's more of a drill sergeant than a mother hen. The last time he heard her call anyone sweetheart, they were carrying a very bloody Sirius into A&E.

"Yeah," he says. He can feel it weighing on him like stones in his pockets. There's a funny bad dream quality to the whole mess. If only he could just wake up to find it all undone again.

Lily makes a little commiserating noise and rests her head on his shoulder. He opens his mouth to tell her why he's hurting, why he's been hurting for months, years, why this is the twist of the knife. But then he takes a long look at her, and closes it again. Peter doesn't have the first idea, but he suspects Lily has him figured out. Maybe James, too, he's sharper than most people think. And as for Sirius--no. Best not to think about that now.

"It's like," he says instead, choosing his words carefully, "Like running for a bus. You know you're never going to catch it but you can't... you can't stop yourself running after it. Because you still think you've got a chance, even though anyone could tell you that you were never going to make it."

The bitch of it is this: if he really thought it was never going to happen, he could have given it up. But when he looks back on all the years they've known each other, there are all these little things that make him wonder. The bike outside the window. The song about the motorbike. The way it was always Remus' bedroom window, never James or Peter's. The way it's always Remus he wakes up when he can't sleep. The way Remus is the only one he tells about the bad dreams.

"I wondered," Lily admits. "I'm not very good at this stuff, I don't always see it. But you two... even I wondered, put it that way. What are you going to do?"

Remus looks up at her. "What do you mean, what am I going to do?"

"Well. Do you think you can play?"

He makes a face. "Can't back out now, can I?" He glances over at her, slyly. "Not when you've got that bloke from the label coming down."

She punches him in the arm. "That was supposed to be a _secret_ , you knob," she says, but she's grinning. "Anyway. I was _trying_ to get him to come. He said maybe, I don't know if he's actually going to turn up."

Remus waves one hand impatiently. "Still. If we pull out now it's going to be impossible to get any more shows booked, the promoters won't touch us. I'll be fine."

Lily makes a weird face, both sympathetic and guilty. He's right, and she knows it. "Well," she says. "If you're sure." She chews her lip, frowning.

He manages to dredge up a smile. "Lily. I'll be alright. Go in, they need you in there."

She sniffs. "True. I've seen what James does to his amps, god forbid he gets bored and gets his hands on the desk." She stands up and dusts off her jeans, then gives his shoulder a quick squeeze. "Okay. Come back when you're ready, no rush."

She disappears back inside, giving him space. He finishes the cigarette and grinds it out on the kerb, then sits for a minute and just breathes. This isn't so bad. All he needs to do is hold it together while they play, then if he leaves straight away he'll be able avoid most if not all of their friends. They might know there's something up, but he's past caring about that.

He can't put it off forever. He gets to his feet and lets out a long, slow breath, willing himself to keep it together. He can't cry. He won't. Once he's got himself back under control, he pushes the door open and heads back inside.

Mercifully, Lily is soundchecking Peter's drums already and everyone's attention is elsewhere, so Remus doesn't have to walk into a silent room with everyone's eyes on him. He takes his place on the stage at James' right hand, not even looking at Sirius.

"Hi hat, please!" calls Lily. Peter grabs the edge of the crash cymbal to stop it ringing and starts on the hi hat instead while Lily fiddles with the levels and makes adjustments.

Remus tunes out as she moves on to James. Instead of the traditional _check one two_ speech, James likes to take the opportunity to try out wedding vows while Lily adjusts the EQ and reverb. Normally Remus thinks it's funny. Tonight it gnaws at him for reasons he finds difficult to explain.

He sleepwalks through the rest of the soundcheck, playing when he's told to. He doesn't even think about playing the one about the motorbike, just goes straight for Dazed And Confused, the long, slow slide down and the quick hops back up. Behind the desk, Lily's mouth is twisted to one side, but she doesn't say a word.

"Thanks, Remus," she says. He takes his bass off and props it carefully against the wall at the side of the stage. He needs to be somewhere, anywhere but here. He sticks his hands in his pockets and hops down off the stage. They're not on for another hour, and he'd rather wait outside.

 

*

 

Remus doesn't remember much of the show. He wishes the end of the tour could have turned out differently. He wishes a lot of things could have turned out differently, but there's nothing he can do about it now. He's just waiting for it to be over. The noise of the crowd is deafening. Remus can see James' elation but he can't feel it. It's like he's watching all of this play out in front of him on a TV screen. James is on fire, holding the crowd in the palm of his hand, and Remus keeps his eyes down and plays, careful not to make eye contact with any of the familiar faces in the crowd.

Finally, after the encore, he steps down off the stage, his head down and his shoulders hunched, his eyes stinging, the cheering still ringing in his ears and his sweaty hands slipping on the neck of his bass.

"Get out of my way," Remus says, quietly. Sirius doesn't move. Remus shoves at him. "I mean it," he says, raising his voice. "Move."

"What's the matter with you?" hisses Sirius, somewhere between pissed off and pleading. "You're making a scene, just - _leave it_ , alright?"

Remus stops dead. His blood has turned and there's a roaring in his ears, like the sea, like a storm.

"No," he says, quietly.

"Remus, _please_ \--"

"Please what?" says Remus, in a voice of dangerous, icy calm that doesn't sound like his own.

"Please, just - not now, okay? We'll do this later." Sirius looks desperate now, but it does nothing to put out the fire.

"We won't," Remus says, still in that falsely level voice. "You'll keep on finding ways to avoid it, just like you always do. You don't get to... to shut this away until you're ready to deal with it, alright? So." He takes a slow, deliberate step towards Sirius. "Go on. Let's hear it."

Sirius' mouth is hanging open, an angry flush spreading down his neck, and Remus feels a sick, horrible twist of satisfaction. Sirius isn't so difficult to figure out, not really. Push the right buttons and he'll always give you what you want, as long as what you want is a fight. People are staring. He knows, distantly, that they should take this outside, but he can't think straight. "You're a fucking coward," he says, and then, when Sirius makes a choked, furious noise, "What, are you going to prove me wrong?"

"I'm trying to stop you embarrassing yourself," hisses Sirius, his eyes darting left and right, taking in the crowd gathering in anticipation of a brawl.

Remus laughs at that. The laugh doesn't really sound like him, either. There's a stretched quality to it, like a voice about to crack on a high note. "Right," he says. "Stupid of me. It's _me_ that's made the horribly embarrassing mistake here, not you. How could I forget?"

"Stop it!" Sirius looks almost hunted now, and Remus realises that he's scared. If Remus decides to do this here in front of everybody there's not a damn thing Sirius can do about it. Remus thinks inexplicably of those little cardboard boxes of bang snaps that were such a playground favourite when he was at school, the kind that exploded with a loud crack when you threw them at the ground. "Look, I wasn't trying to... I didn't mean..."

"Of course you didn't," Remus says bitterly. He can see James watching out of the corner of his eye and Lily trying to pull him away, but he can't seem to stop. The idea that this is life or death to him but just a mistake to be written out of the story for Sirius is so awful, so _unfair_. Remus isn't the hot-blooded type, not like Sirius or Lily or even James. But for a single, wild second, he wants to throw a punch. "You've changed your mind so now you're going to fucking reinvent yourself around it like it never even happened so you can go back to your nice, safe little--"

"Stop it!" Sirius half-shouts, louder this time. "Maybe not everything is about you! Did that even cross your mind?"

"That's rich," snaps Remus, "Coming from you. You're the great Sirius Black and no one has ever known suffering like yours, is that it? You're just trying to find yourself, never mind who gets in the way."

"I don't--why are you _like_ this?!"

Remus doesn't even think. His mouth is open before he even knows what he's going to say, never mind who's watching, never mind that he could get the shit kicked out of him for doing this here. "Because I--"

" _I know!_ " Sirius shouts back, cutting him off, and Remus could swear his heart stops. "I know, alright? Jesus. Have done for years, but you never said anything and I didn't... you know." He stops, runs a hand uncomfortably through his hair. "Want you to."

"You knew," Remus says. His own heartbeat is deafening in his ears. "All this time."

"Yeah," says Sirius guiltily. "But I didn't want... you know."

Remus can feel humiliation trickling through him, hot and horrible. Sirius knew. Remus thought he was being so good, so careful, tucking even the edges of it out of sight so it couldn't be seen. But Sirius knew. Sirius has been laughing at him for god knows how long. Months? Years? Remus can hardly bear to look at him. Just the thought of Sirius' pity turns his stomach. "Well," he says, in a flattened sort of voice. "I suppose that's it, then."

"Remus," says Sirius desperately, like he's only just realised how this is sounding. "Stop, I didn't mean..."

"No," says Remus, struggling to keep his voice steady. He hates Sirius just then, with his black eye and his greasy hair and his too-small jeans and that stupid Sex Pistols t-shirt with the sleeves hacked off and god, god, Remus loves him so much it makes him sick. "You can't... just leave it, okay? I'm done. I'm out."

"Wait," Sirius insists, grabbing at Remus' arm, but Remus pulls it free.

"I'm done," he says again, and pushes past Sirius and out of the door.

He walks fast, not thinking about where he's going. He can't go back to the flat, that much is obvious. He can't go home to his parents, they'll want to know all about how it went and he doesn't think he's got it in him to lie right now. His feet carry him down to the Lock and he sits down on a bench, feeling sick. It's over. It's _over_. Not just Sirius, either, the whole thing - the band, at least for Remus. It was his whole life and he's just slammed the door shut and locked the keys inside.

He's spent many a long night thinking it out, and what it comes down to is this: it's James and Sirius who are the heart and soul of the thing. Remus is, by virtue of hour upon hour of practice, a competent musician. More than that, even, but he's really had to work at it. And that's not to say Sirius hasn't, but, well. Remus understands music well enough to know a virtuoso when he sees one, and they could find another bassist. Remus told them so himself, when James first told him they needed someone with a bass. _You could ask Frank Longbottom_ , he said. _I think he plays. Or Ben McMillan's sister. It's one of those things, isn't it? Anyone could learn, if they tried_ . And James said, _we don't want anyone. We want you._ Remus still remembers how his mouth went dry. He knew, somehow, that this was important.

He remembers their first ever practice, too, with vivid, aching clarity. It had been a late summer afternoon, that final week of August that always feels like a Sunday afternoon with Monday morning hanging unspoken in the air. Peter's drumkit was missing the floor tom and the ride cymbal was cracked and James had to go without a microphone, almost screaming just to make himself heard over the two crackly guitar amps. The heat in James' parents' garage was stifling, the door closed so as not to disturb the neighbours, the windowless space at once crowded and echoing. Remus had had his bass less than a week and his fingertips were blistered and clumsy on the fretboard. He remembers James' grey t-shirt, dark with sweat, and the wild joy on Sirius' face and the furious concentration on Peter's. They must have sounded like shit, unpractised and probably out of tune, but Remus remembers the hairs rising on the back of his neck. This is it, he remembers thinking, nonsensically, as James launched them all into the chorus of the first song he'd ever written. This is it. This is the thing that makes everything else okay.

He tries not to think about that.

He sits there and lets it all hit him one piece at a time, like shrapnel. He thinks about the Polaroid stuck to the dashboard of the van, all five of them squeezed onto the sofa James and Sirius found on the pavement outside the flat, all laughing at something James had just said, Peter's arm in the left side of the frame because he'd been holding the camera. He thinks about the black smoke stain on the kitchen ceiling, a relic of Lily's first and only attempt at a Sunday roast. Four years later, Lily still can't cook and they usually end up getting a Sunday takeaway instead. He thinks about the photograph from some anti-Thatcher demonstration that Sirius cut out of the Evening Standard and taped to the door of the fridge, because he was there and he swears blind you can see his face in the corner. He thinks about the five of them stumbling along under the streetlights, all sober but tired in that four-in-the-morning way where everything becomes hilarious, James leading them all in the invention of increasingly obscene songs. He thinks about the scar on his lip and the box of tapes and the song about the motorbike.

He hears footsteps behind him and looks up, simultaneously relieved and disappointed to see James making his way over. James sits down next to him without a word. If he notices Remus' red-rimmed eyes or his ragged breathing, he doesn't say a word. Remus braces himself for what comes next. James will offer him an out, and he'll take it.

"For what it's worth," says James quietly, "He's in bits over this."

"Is he," says Remus, and he doesn't feel much of anything at all. Either he's so angry that nothing else is registering or he's gone into shock and just stopped feeling altogether.

"Yeah," says James. "He's my best mate, but he's acting like a twat."

Remus looks up, surprised. "What?"

James fidgets uncomfortably for a moment, then visibly pulls himself together. "He knows what he wants. He's just... scared."

"Scared," says Remus flatly. "Of course. I'm the one who's going to lose my band and all my friends but he's scared. Okay."

"Don't be like that." There's a snap in his voice that's more sharp-tongued Lily than easy-going James. "You're not going to lose anything. Anyway, you know what he's like." James gives him a long, hard look. "You probably know better than me how his parents messed him up."

"That's not the point," Remus snaps back, irrationally irritated because he knows, deep down, that James isn't wrong.

James shrugs, as if to say, _hey, don't shoot the messenger_. "Anyway," he says. "You left before things got interesting."

"What? _More_ interesting?" Remus says, with a gallows laugh. The more he thinks about it, the more he wants to disappear completely. Just record over himself, like a crap song on a mix tape.

"Mhm. You'll never guess who turned up."

"No, I probably won't. Oh, Jesus, it wasn't the label guy, was it?" Remus drops his head into his hands. How embarrassing.

"Nah," says James cheerfully. "No sign of him. Probably for the best, really. No, not him." 

"Come on, then. Who?"

"Regulus."

" _What?_ "

"Yeah."

"Regulus _Black?_ "

"How many Reguluses do we know? Yes, Regulus Black."

"Shit. How did Sirius take it?" Remus asks, and immediately despairs of himself for caring.

"Not well, if I'm honest," James says thoughtfully, lighting one cigarette and offering another one to Remus, who shakes his head. They sit in silence for a little while, Remus feeling sick to his stomach.

"It's getting late," James says, eventually, giving Remus' shoulder a squeeze. "You should go home."

Something knifes through Remus' chest at the word _home_. It probably isn't anymore. Not for him, anyway.

"I suppose," he says, getting to his feet. It is late but it's still warm, the lingering perfume of the incense and the food stalls in the market warring with the stink of the city in high summer and the brackish tang of the water. Camden was never glamorous, but he's always loved it. He'll miss it. "You coming?"

James gives him a long look. "No," he says. " _You_ should go home."

Remus blinks, too worn out to parse whatever James is trying to tell him. James Potter is a good friend and much more besides, but he's not exactly known for putting the B in subtle. Maybe James is trying, in his way, to give Remus space to pull himself together or time to round up the things scattered around the flat that were once his. Whatever it means, it doesn't sound like a bad idea. If Remus goes home now he can at least pretend to be asleep later when the others get home and avoid the awkward conversations.

"Alright," he says. He sinks his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He wants to say something. Anything. _Thanks for taking a chance on the weird, sick kid. Thanks for the last five years. Thanks for everything_. But saying it would make it real, and he can't quite cough the words up. Instead, he just says, "'Night, James," and turns to walk away.

He walks the long way back to the flat, the key burning a hole in his pocket the whole way. His feet feel heavy as he climbs the stairs and shoulders open the door. He steps into the dark and the quiet, feeling hollowed out. And then--

"'Lo," says a voice, and Remus nearly drops dead on the spot. Heart thumping, he scrabbles for the light switch and hits it.

Sirius is sitting at one end of the sofa, slumped low into the cushions, an open bottle of wine held loosely in one hand.

"Jesus _Christ_ ," says Remus, with feeling, aiming a vicious kick at the skirting board. His heart is still hammering away, unburnt adrenaline making his hands itch to ball up into fists. "Fuck me dead, you nearly gave me a heart attack. What the hell were you doing, just sitting here in the dark like that?"

Sirius focusses on him, apparently with some difficulty, and Remus becomes aware of the thick, headachy smell of red wine in the air. "I was just... sitting here," he says. "And it got dark."

"And it never occurred to you to, oh, I don't know, turn the lights on?"

Sirius shrugs, and says nothing. In a stomach-flippingly horrible moment, Remus remembers exactly why they're supposed to be fighting. In the heat of the moment, he was so glad to see a friendly face and not a stranger trying to make off with the TV set that he somehow forgot that Sirius isn't really a friendly face at all right now. The memory seeps through him like cold rain through a jumper. He sits down on the other end of the sofa and yanks savagely at the laces of his trainers. He should ask about Regulus, he knows he should, but he can't make himself do it. If he opens his mouth he'll say something about the other thing, and he's not going to do that.

They sit in awkward silence for a long moment.

"I'm going to bed," Remus says, finally, getting to his feet, just as Sirius says, "I fucked it up."

Remus sits back down, slowly. "Go on."

"I fucked it up with Regulus." Sirius stares down at the bottle in his hand like he's not really seeing it at all. Sirius never, ever talks about his brother. "He ran away from Eton, did you know? Hitchhiked all the way here from Windsor." He hesitates, rolling the bottle between his hands. "I shouldn't have-- it wasn't his fault."

It takes Remus a minute to catch up, thrown by the non-sequitur. "What wasn't?"

Sirius opens his mouth, but doesn't speak for a moment. "When we were kids," he says, after a moment, "He never... he was the golden boy. I used to feel like he could have stopped my mum and dad. You know, if he'd tried."

Remus doesn't know what to say to that. "Oh," he manages. It isn't _fair_. He wanted to be angry. God knows he's got good reason to be, but here they are again. Here they are again, with Sirius broken in unlikely places and Remus, aching for him, wishing there was some way to put him back together.

"And," Sirius says, his eyes sharpening as he looks up at Remus, "I fucked it up with you."

Remus eyes him warily. The last thing he wants is to do is open his mouth and humiliate himself again. Sirius is watching him, bloodshot-eyed and unshaven, still stinking of the road.

"What do you want, Sirius?" Remus says. He rubs at his own gritty eyes and wills the blossoming tension headache to ease off. He could sleep for a week, sleep for a hundred years and not wake up again until there's no one left who remembers him. "I'm tired. You said you didn't... want me to. Loud and clear. What else is there to say?"

He looks at Sirius for a moment, hating himself, giving him one last chance. When Sirius doesn't speak, Remus sighs and stands up. He doesn't know what he was expecting, just that he couldn't let it go without knowing for sure. Well, he thinks numbly. That's that.

"Remus--please."

Remus looks back down. Sirius makes an abortive move that almost looks like he's reaching for Remus' hand, but he changes his mind.

"You're drunk," says Remus. "Go to bed, Sirius."

"Not anymore." Sirius' voice is raw but steady. He gets to his feet. "Remus, you don't--you don't _understand_. It's not... there's stuff you don't know, alright?"

That, of all things, is the last straw. "Then--fucking talk to me!" snaps Remus, too worn down to be gentle. His heart feels like a jagged, splintered thing in his chest and Sirius is driving the shards in deeper and deeper. "What am I supposed to do, read your mind if you don't have the balls to say it?" Remus should know better than to provoke him, he knows all too well that there's no quicker way to get Sirius' hackles up. But he's tired, and he's hurting, and for better or worse, this ends tonight.

Sirius fires up immediately, like he's following a script. "Oh, fuck off. How many years has it been, Remus? How long have you been sitting on this? Why didn't _you_ say something?"

Remus hears the noise he makes, a shocked, shivery gasp like he's been doused in cold water. "Double standards," he hisses, "Double _fucking_ standards, Sirius. How can you even ask me that? You see this?" Remus makes a vague, sweeping gesture that encompasses the two of them, the flat, the band - Remus' whole world. "This-- _this_ is why. But we're not talking about me, are we? Answer the question. Tell me why."

"Because I was _scared_ , alright?" Sirius shouts, throwing his hands up. Remus is dimly aware that they're making enough noise to wake the neighbours. He doesn't care.

"Scared?" He laughs, and it doesn't sound like him. " _You_ fuck off. What have you ever had to be scared of, Sirius Black?"

Sirius recoils, whether from the question or from his own full name Remus doesn't know. Then Sirius starts towards him, one step, two, and for a horrible, heart-pounding moment Remus thinks Sirius is going to hit him, but then Sirius' hands are on his face and Sirius is kissing him like he's dying. Remus stands there for a moment, paralysed by shock, before he scrambles back and shoves Sirius away with all his strength. Sirius goes stumbling backwards, his eyes big and hurt.

"You can't do that," Remus says, quietly, "Sirius, you don't get to do that and just -- expect it to fix things."

There's a long, awful silence. Remus thinks, randomly, of stepping on a smashed teacup, breaking it into smaller and smaller pieces.

"I wasn't trying to... I didn't mean it like that," says Sirius wretchedly.

Remus grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes. His head hurts and his heart hurts and he loves Sirius so much it feels like he's being broken open, like it's too much for his body to contain, but Christ, he's so tired. "Just let me know when you've made your mind up, alright?"

He turns to go, thinking vaguely of crashing in James' room, but Sirius catches him by the arm.

"Stop it, Sirius," he snaps. He yanks his arm free. "I mean it. Unless you've got something else to say, I'm done."

"Listen," says Sirius urgently. "Listen. I'm sorry. I never wanted to..." he trails off, then visibly pulls himself together. "I fuck things up," he says, his voice barely a whisper. He looks so fucking miserable that Remus feels a spike of sympathy in spite of himself. "All of it," Sirius goes on remorselessly. "School. Jesus, look at the mess I made of that. Uni? Not exactly likely now, is it? Regulus? I don't know where the fuck he ran off to. He could be anywhere. None of the--none of the stupid shit I always blamed him for is even his fault. I should have been, you know, looking out for him. And now you. It's not because you're..." he makes a vague hand gesture that Remus takes to mean _a bloke_ . "It's because it's _you_."

 That much, at least, Remus is prepared to believe. In the some of the places they've played, Sirius' accent alone would be enough to get him punched, and announcing that he was gay as well would just about be asking for it. So Sirius keeps it quiet, because he likes a bar fight as much as anyone but he doesn't actually go looking to get his head kicked in. But he's always seemed pretty happy with who he is.

"So now I've done it again. Fucked it all up. You and the band." Sirius is breathing hard, like he's been running. 

Remus opens his mouth, but all he can say is, "You've still got the band."

Sirius gives him a long, searching look. "Not if you walk out, I haven't. It all falls apart without you, Remus." He pauses for a beat, like he's waiting for Remus to smile or roll his eyes or laugh knowingly. But Remus doesn't, and Sirius' wan smile flickers uncertainly. "Come on, you must know that."

"Oh, leave it out." Remus isn't in the mood for Sirius' charm tonight. "You could find another bassist."

"No, we couldn't." Sirius grabs at Remus' hand again and holds it. "You really think that, don't you? You really think we'd carry on without you."

Remus pulls his hand free, annoyed. "Don't be thick. You've done all this work, don't... throw it away because of me."

Sirius looks at him wonderingly. "You honestly don't get it."

Remus pinches the bridge of his nose. "Spit it out, Sirius."

"We need you," Sirius says, simply. He hesitates. "Christ, it scares me shitless, but _I_ need you."

Remus closes his eyes for a moment. Last week - a lifetime ago - he would have given anything to hear that. "You don't. I know it'll fuck your recording schedule if you have to find someone else to play my parts, but you don't need _me_."

Sirius sucks in a sharp breath, going still for a moment. Remus didn't mean to be cruel, but he's too numb to hurt anymore and he just wants this finished. "Okay," Sirius says, after a moment, "Leaving that for the minute--Christ, you must think I'm a cold bastard, and I'm not even _touching_ the fact that you seem to think the others would let me do it--yes, we fucking do! What do I have to do to get it through that thick skull of yours?" he runs one hand through his hair, exasperated.

Remus manages a wan smile. "I don't think you can," he says. "It's alright. You don't need to try to let me down easy, you're making it worse."

Sirius looks at him intently, a look that burns him down and leaves him charred and splintered. He says, softly, "I'm not trying to let you down easy. Remus, that's what I've been trying to tell you."

Doubt flickers in Remus, quick and bright. What if _. What if_. He hates that he's still such a fucking sucker for this, even after everything. "Sirius," he says. His mouth is dry. "Don't... don't do that. Not if you don't mean it. It isn't fair."

"And what if I did mean it?" Sirius' voice is low and even. If Remus didn't know him better, he'd be fooled by the show of composure. But Remus does know him better, and that... that throws him. Remus swallows.

"I don't know," he says, honestly. "You tell me."

Sirius moves slowly this time, giving Remus time to back away. He kisses Remus like he's fragile and Remus is so tired, so bruised, not daring to hope, that he lets him.

"You said you didn't want me," Remus murmurs. He doesn't dare phrase it as a question.

"No," Sirius says, "I said I didn't want you to like me. I said I was scared."

"Jesus _Christ_ ," says Remus, and kisses him back. Encouraged, Sirius gets his hands into Remus' hair and pulls him closer, kisses him harder. He's fifteen and Sirius is outside his window, he's eighteen and Sirius is sleeping on his bedroom floor, he's twenty-two and Sirius is kissing him the back of the van, twenty-two and Sirius is breaking his fucking heart. He pulls back just enough to look Sirius in the eye. "Listen," he says, quietly. "You're it. You're it for me, you bastard. Do you understand? I can't do all this again, this is your last chance."

Sirius' face looks momentarily uncertain, then determined. "I know. I know I'm not very good at all this. Not with you, anyway. But I'm gonna try. I think," he says, carefully, "That's why I've been such a shit to you this summer."

Remus raises an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"I felt like... like it was all getting too close. Like I was finally going to have to do something about it, you know? That's what scared me."

Later, Remus will remember that as the moment when he really starts to believe it. The giddy feeling of relief catches light and starts to burn like a sparkler on bonfire night. He can feel himself smiling, a big, stupid, punch-drunk grin. It's real. It's really happening. "Alright," he says, and he thinks, _let's see what this thing can do_.

Sirius kisses him again and Remus can feel it all the way down to his fucking toes. Everything seems strange and hyper-real, the rasp of Sirius' stubble against his cheek, the ghostly orange light streaming through the windows, the low hum of the fridge, the wall at his back.

After another minute or two, Remus turns his head to the side and stifles a yawn. "We're not done here," he murmurs. "We've got some things to iron out, but it's going to have to wait until the morning."

Sirius laughs against his neck. "I'll tell the others I wore you out. Might leave out how, though."

"Mmm. Speaking of," says Remus, "Where are they?"

Sirius shrugs. "Don't know. They were very insistent that I come back here and sort things out with you, though. Especially James. Threats were made."

"I bet they were." Remus feels an odd mixture of exasperation and affection for them all. This has James' fingerprints all over it. Unlike Lily, who has a keenly developed sense of when to leave well enough alone, James is an intolerable busybody and an inveterate gossip. Remus raises one hand to his mouth and tries unsuccessfully to swallow another yawn.

"Bedtime," says Sirius. "Come on."

He leads the way across the living room, kicks open his bedroom door and gently pushes Remus inside. Remus sits down on the edge of the bed and kicks his trainers off, listening to the first birdsong starting up outside the window while Sirius makes a perfunctory attempt to straighten the duvet. Sirius kicks off his boots and chucks them into a corner then stretches out on the bed, patting the space next to him. This isn't over, Remus reminds himself, as sleep begins to close over him. This is Sirius, after all. There are going to be storms. It's going to be messy and difficult, but for now, it's enough. It's enough.

They fall asleep in their jeans, side by side.

 

*

 

Remus wakes up again with a strange lurching feeling, sleep rolling off him like water. It feels like stepping out of a bath. There's a knot of anxiety in his stomach that it takes him a minute to unravel, but he gets there. The night before comes back to him in broad stripes, one on top of the other like coats of paint. He's aware of a warm body beside him, snoring gently. Remus grins at the ceiling. This is the jackpot. This is Christmas fucking morning.

He lies there until the need to go for a piss finally wins out over his unwillingness to move, then levers himself carefully out of the bed and across to the door. Once he's finished in the bathroom, he makes his way back to the kitchen and fills the kettle for tea. He knows it happened, he knows it was real, but he still can't believe it. His head aches and his throat is sore and he doesn't give a shit. He's flying. Somehow, miraculously, it's all worked out.

Remus takes two tannin-stained mugs out of the cupboard and runs through the little ritual with his mind already back in Sirius' bedroom. Mugs, teabags, hot water. He could find his way around this kitchen with his eyes shut, he's spent that much time in here over the last five years. He smiles to himself, remembering. Just after they moved in, James and Sirius did a panicky and extravagantly expensive food shop. They came back with stuffed olives, Spanish ham, smoked salmon, strawberries, steaks. Quails' eggs. Truffle oil. They did not come back with salt or pepper, bread, or washing up liquid. Even Lily, atrocious cook that she is, had to laugh at that. Lily never learned, but Remus is fairly competent these days and James can just about manage omelettes and oven chips and the like. Sirius, who never even had to make his own toast before he moved out of his parents' place, turned out to have a surprising flair for it.

Remus is just looking for the carton of long life milk that Lily usually has the foresight to buy before they go away when James appears in the doorway, sleepy-eyed and grinning like a maniac.

"Morning," he says, sitting down at the table.

"Morning yourself. What's wrong with your face?" It's not like Remus didn't know James was a morning person, but this is too much. Remus gives each teabag a last squeeze with the back of a spoon before scooping them both carefully into the bin, splashes in some milk (only a little bit for himself, as much as the mug can safely hold for James) and sits down on the other side of the table. He pushes one of the mugs towards James, who adds several spoonfuls of sugar from the bowl and takes a long sip. He doesn't say anything for a moment, like he's trying to be mysterious and aloof. Remus counts down in his head. Three, two... one.

"Evans said she'd go out with me," James says, rushing the words out like he can't hold them in any longer.

Remus tries very, very hard to look surprised. "Oh, did she?" he says. He'd like to think that there's someone who owes him an obscene amount of money right now, but no one would have bet against Lily and James. He grins. "Well, congratulations, mate. She's going to eat you alive."

"I know," James says fervently, and gives a dreamy little sigh.

Remus shakes his head and tries not to choke on his tea.

"Are _you_ alright, though?" James says, his eyes sharpening as he watches Remus over the rim of his mug. It sounds like he's asking two questions at once. Remus can hear both a you, singular, and a you, plural, in there. Remus hesitates, because - well. Is he? Are they? It's going to be stormy and complicated for a whole bouquet of different reasons, not least of which the fact that Sirius is Sirius. It's going to have to be kept a secret from a lot of people, but it's okay. It's a start.

"Yeah," Remus says, and he's almost surprised to find that he really, truly means it. "I think so. It's just going to be... difficult. You know what he's like. But we'll be alright."

"I don't know what you're insinuating," says a sleepy voice, and Remus looks around to see Sirius leaning against the doorframe, still in last night's jeans, unshaven and grinning. "But you're probably right." He wanders over and runs one hand absent-mindedly through Remus' hair and Remus feels like his heart is trying to kick its way out of his chest. He knows this is just Sirius' way of figuring out how things are going to be now, but he'd be lying if he said he wasn't enjoying it.

"You absolute bastards," Sirius says, inspecting the empty kettle. "You made tea and didn't make me any?" He points a teaspoon at Remus as he picks up the kettle and carries it over to the sink. "I want a divorce. What's wrong with James' face?"

"Lily said she'd go out with him," Remus says, just as Lily appears in the doorway, yawning, wearing an old Queen t-shirt that comes down to her knees.

"Is that so? Well, she scrubs up well enough, I'll give her that," says Sirius, raising an eyebrow and leaning back against the counter. "She's not a bad-looking bird, when she's had a wash. Ow. _Ow._ Evans! Stop--ow. I was _joking_. Ow."

Lily keeps pulling Sirius' hair and they're both laughing, the morning sun pouring in, and Remus catches James' eye, and he grins. This is the life, he thinks, as he clinks his mug against James'. This is the fucking life.

 

*

 

"Play it again," Remus says. He's lying on the floor in the middle of James and Sirius' living room, his head pillowed in his hands. He's grinning so hard his entire face hurts.

"Again?" says Lily. "Aren't you sick of it yet?" Remus doesn't even have to look over to know she's smiling too. 

"Never," says Remus. It's _their song_.

"You heard the man," James says, lazily, from where he's sprawled on the sofa. "Peter?"

Peter obligingly reaches over and Remus hears the whirring of the tape spooling backwards and the click of the play button. He closes his eyes as the song fills the room. It's so strange, the way he feels lost in it all over again.

When it's over, he opens his eyes. Sirius is lying next to him on the floor, grinning. Remus smiles back and Sirius reaches over to run one hand through his hair.

"Big day tomorrow," says Lily, getting to her feet. "James, I'm going to the shop. Want to come with me?"

"Not especially," says James, stretching out lazily on the sofa.

Lily picks up one of James' stray shoes from where it's lying abandoned on the floor and throws it him. "Yes you do," she says, sweetly. "We've got nothing in and we need breakfast stuff for tomorrow. You're not meeting the label guy on an empty stomach. Besides, you want to help me carry the bags."

"If you say so, light of my life," says James, amicably. He sits up and puts the shoe on, then starts looking around for the other one.

"I'm going home," announces Peter, getting to his feet. "I need some clean clothes."

James locates his missing shoe with a cry of triumph, pulls it on, and stands up. He pulls Lily close and kisses her on the cheek, making her roll her eyes in that way she does when she's trying not to smile. They're good together, really good, just like Remus knew they would be. They still bicker, more out of habit than anything else, but James would do absolutely anything for her and they all know it.

"What about you two useless layabouts?" says James, looking down at Remus and Sirius. "What are you doing now?"

Sirius sits up and reaches for the battered old acoustic guitar propped against the arm of the sofa. "I've got some lyrics," he said. "We were going to see if we could work out a bassline. Oh, and Regulus said he might drop by after work."

"Alright, say hello to your brother for me," says James, agreeably, as Lily and Peter step out onto the landing outside. "Have fun. Don't do anything I wouldn't do." He winks, and slams the door behind him.

Sirius immediately puts the guitar back down. "Alone at last," he says, grinning.

"You're shameless," Remus tells him, but he can feel the fond smile on his face.

Sirius shrugs. "Come on," he says, pulling Remus up onto the sofa. Remus doesn't resist, and they sit there leaning against each other and watching the late afternoon sunlight sliding down the faded posters on the walls.

"I think we should tell Regulus," says Sirius, after a minute.

Remus drops his head onto Sirius' shoulder. "Tell him what?"

"About, you know. Us."

Remus looks up. "Really?" he says, surprised. Lily, James and Peter know, but for now, they're the only ones. Remus doesn't care who knows, but he knows Sirius is still getting used to the idea. Remus thought he'd been pretty good at reading Sirius' quicksilver moods before, but now it's as if he has the key to the cypher. Sirius still picks stupid fights when there are things he can't bring himself to say. Remus has been getting better and better at prising open the jaws of that steel trap of a mind when they snap shut on some petty, trivial thing. It's a work in progress, and that's alright. Sirius is trying.  
  
"We don't have to," says Remus. "Not if you don't want to."  
  
Regulus has been around a lot lately. He's been sleeping on floors and sofas, just like Sirius did after he left their parents' house for the last time. There's years and years worth of congealed animosity to unpick between the two of them, but Remus has been watching as they've started to build a tentative friendship from the rubble. Remus knows that Regulus' opinion means a lot more to Sirius than he lets on.  
  
"I want to," says Sirius, and he sounds sure. "If Lily and James and Peter can deal with it, so can he."  
  
Lily, James and even Peter hadn't been at all surprised by the news that Remus and Sirius are... what are they, exactly? They aren't just fucking, that's for sure, although they are very much doing that. No one's said it, but every time Remus thinks the words _in love_ his heart skips at the dizzy improbability of it. He thinks Sirius feels the same. He hopes so.  
  
Remus kisses the corner of his mouth and feels him smile. "Alright, then," he says, and just for once, it's easy. They sit quietly for a little while, leaning against each other like they're back in the van.

"A real label," says Sirius after a minute, for the hundredth time since they got the call. He's grinning.

"It's only a preliminary meeting," Remus reminds him, also for the hundredth time. It's a gamble, essentially. The demos are good, really good; Remus knows it deep down in his his blood and his bones and his fucking _soul_ , but they don't add up to a finished record. James and Sirius have spent hours and hours re-working their pitch, and what it boils down to is this: _give us this shot and we could be spectacular_.

"A real label," counters Sirius, pressing Remus into the sofa cushions and kissing him. "And they liked our demo."

"A real label," echoes Remus, giving in. He feels feather-light, his heart fluttering in his chest. This is it - the flying feeling. Sure, he thinks, as Sirius fits his hand against Remus' jaw and works the other hand into his hair, it's early days. But, he thinks, as he kisses back, things are pretty good.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [MIX: The Ballad Of Me & My Friends](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11215581) by [dear_monday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dear_monday/pseuds/dear_monday)




End file.
